Facebook, Twitter are designed to work as "cocaine": report

Social media companies are working hard to make us addicted to their services according to internal sources in Silicon Valley.

Functions like infinite scroll and The "I love" button allows users to interact with their phone more than necessary, as well as feed the user's insecurities , sources at the BBC Panorama program said.

Aza Raskin, who worked on Mozilla and Jawbone, created an infinite scroll in 2006, which made it possible to slide down to see the content in infinity, without even having to click.

"If you do not give your brain time to catch up, then you continue to slide," he says.

Raskin says his intention was not to become addicted to people, but that he feels guilty effect of their innovation, he told the BBC. However, it is only one of the ways that social networking platforms make users unable to do without their services.

"It's like they've had behavioral cocaine and then they sprayed it all over your interface, and that's what makes you come back to the service again and again," Raskin says. .

"Behind every screen of your phone, there are usually a thousand engineers who have worked on it to make it as addictive as possible," he said.

Leah Pearlman, who created the Facebook Like button with Justin Rosenstein, admitted to the BBC that she became addicted to the social network while she was looking to rack up Likes for her publications.

"When I need validation, I will check my Facebook account." he said. "I feel lonely, let me see my phone, I do not feel safe, let me see my phone."

Last year, Rosenstein noticed that the Like button caused an increase in clickbait or cybera.

"I think it has also caused the distribution of things, even when people like it, not to be a good use of time," Rosenstein said.

Facebook has also facilitated the addition of the Like button to your pages.

The Menlo Park giant denied that his service was deliberately designed to create an addiction.

"The allegations that emerged during the production process of BBC Panorama are imprecise, Facebook and Instagram have been developed to bring people closer to their friends, family and things of interest to them," said a spokesman. word of Facebook and Instagram.

"This goal is central to any design decision we make and at no point is the desire for something addictive to enter this process," he said.

This year, Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, makes change alnews feed to increase the "time in which a proper use is made" of the site. However, the person in charge of this function admitted that the company "is still trying to decipher" exactly what it means and implies.

In June, it was said that the tech giant was testing a tool called "Your Time on Facebook", designed to help users manage the time they spend on the site.

Twitter declined to comment on the subject. Snapchat did not respond immediately to our request for comment.