US Lawmaker Wants to Pass a Law to Ban Infinite Scroll in Facebook / Instagram

If you didn’t know, here’s a shocker: studies and experiments were actually done to create a product that can keep you coming back for more.

Take, for example, the popular apps you’re using now.

You’d realise that initially, there were quite a number of notifications, but as you use it more often, the notifications toned down. Also, in the games you’re playing now, you’d also notice that ads won’t appear in the first five hours when you’re using it, and suddenly, when they appear five hours later, you won’t be annoyed at them.

All these psychological and measured tricks are there to turn you into addicts—the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products details some of the “tricks” tech companies used to make you feel uncomfortable when you’re not using their products.

For example, some of us would feel like the world’s ended when you’ve not gone into Instagram for more than…five hours, and it’s not an accident but a deliberate act by Instagram to keep you hooked.

And one lawmaker in the US isn’t happy, so he’s come out with a bill, widely known as “Instagram Addiction Bill”, to solve this problem.

Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act

Okay, technically, it’s called the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act.

For starters, here’s how a law becomes a law: firstly, a lawmaker will come out with a bill (think of it as a proposal) that will be tabled in Congress (in Singapore, it will be tabled in Parliament, but the idea’s the same).

After debates, it’ll then be voted on whether it should be turned into a law.

So, Senator Josh Hawley, a lawmaker from the US, unveiled the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act three days ago.

The bill wants the infinite scroll for news feeds in social media apps to be banned, and also auto-play of videos be removed. Also, those apps must have a time limit that’s set every month: for example, if you want to spend just 30 minutes on Facebook daily, that 30 minutes per day would be set in stone until the month is over.

The Logic Behind the Bill?

So, why the drastic move? It’s to prevent the tech companies from using “addictive and deceptive techniques” to keep our attention.

The 39-year-old Senator, who’s the youngest member of the Senate currently, is not a fan of social media. Back in May this year, he has openly written that the country would have been a better place without social media, writing, “Maybe social media is best understood as a parasite on productive investment, on meaningful relationships, on a healthy society.”

Wah.

Now, before you worry if you’re going to have a limit on the Instagram feed you’re going to see per day, don’t worry: this is a bill and it might not pass as law.

And secondly, even if it somehow get passed as a law, so it’s US laws and not our laws.

Though you’ve got to admit: social media is changing so fastly, you never know what’s going to change next year.

After all, news feed is so yesterday, right? We’re now moving to Stories format.