Infinite scroll and auto-play unjustly under fire

About a year ago, the European Parliament addressed once again the now mainstream concern of the "addictiveness" of social media, claiming that features such as infinite scroll and auto-playing videos are to blame for hocking users to their apps.

In October last year, the Parliament website reads:

"While social media can affect society in positive ways (e.g. increasing efficiency, accessibility, connectedness), its addictive design can cause physical, psychological and material harm (loss of concentration and cognitive ability, burnout, stress, depression, limited physical activity). MEPs are especially worried about the impact digital addiction has on children and adolescents, who are more vulnerable to these symptoms, and they call for more research and regulation in this area."

In comments this summer, European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen said that her "heart bleeds" over young adults engaging in self-harm due to online abuse and promised to tackle cyberbullying and the addictive design of social media platforms. Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines for 2024-2029 are open about the incoming bans on infinite scrolls, autoplays or push: 

The early and teenage years are critical for brain and personality development – and are also times of vulnerability to harms from social media and excessive screen time. We must have an open and evidence-based debate on this issue. This is why we will launch an EU-wide inquiry on the broader impacts of social media on well-being.

 We will tackle unethical techniques used by online platforms by taking action on the addictive design of online services, such as infinite scroll, default auto play or constant push. We will also firmly combat the growing trend of abusive behaviour online with an action plan against cyberbullying.”

As these things usually go, a lot of issues get mixed into a single call for regulatory action. Cyberbullying, or any bullying for that matter, goes back to a time before the existence of smartphones and social media. Anyone who's attended school will be able to testify to that, notwithstanding the fact that we never concluded that dropping out of school was a successful remedy to abuse that happens within its premises. The moment young adults got access to instant messaging way before Facebook was even a thing, they gossiped and left hateful remarks, no different to older adults doing the same thing on their work computers via email or around the coffee machine in their office building. If the Commission's and Parliament's aim is to end bullying, they will need a bigger plan than ending the features of videos auto-playing on Instagram.

For the sake of discussion, let's define terms. Auto-play refers to the fact that videos on social media platforms play automatically in a loop without the user initiating it. This exists on X and can be enabled on TikTok. Platforms such as Instagram and YouTube have stopped autoplaying videos and require users to scroll or click on the next video. "Infinite scroll", sometimes in combination with videos, but not limited to, means that users can essentially spend an endless amount of time on the platform getting new content. There is, in that sense, no "end" to how much content they can see (a reality of the internet one would think policy-makers would be aware of by now).

The important factor to consider here is that the demand for regulating these features essentially translates into wanting Meta and others to have users stop using their platform beyond an allocated number of time. This is a very strange demand to make towards a business. Picture the scene of asking IKEA to shorten the walkway through their store because it is designed to incentivise people to buy more furniture, asking a shopping centre to align escalators in a way that helps people leave the store sooner, or a nightclub to play worse music so the visitors leave earlier. Since the beginning of commercial venues, companies have tried to keep customers on their premises and on their websites. Many TV stations have been on the air for many decades, with advertising, "auto-playing" content and teasing the upcoming movies in an effort to keep the audience hooked. Asking a company to do something that is not in the interest of their business model is peculiar at best, and given the fact that legislators think of a time that is deemed appropriate to spend online, it is dystopian at its worst.

For consumers, legislation on infinite scroll and auto-play means a reduction in choice. Those who do not want videos to autoplay and who want a limit to how much they can scroll can enable features on the apps that allow them to do that or simply stop using the apps in question. In the same way that our phone providers don't cut off our phone conversations because they've been deemed too long, and our TVs don't time out because we're in the third re-watch of the fifth season of Dr. House, we also don't need paternalists telling us how much time we ought to spend on Facebook.

The concerns of mental health of young adults are to be taken seriously, but the rules in question would neither tackle that problem nor address it soberly. There are social problems that are hard to solve, and regulating features on social media is nothing but a performative fix.