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Comment by tooop | Hacker News Reader

That is a social media problem not infinite scrolling problem.

Infinite scrolling triggers a dopamine response in users, not unlike a slot machine. It's sole purpose is to keep users hooked on the app. It's designed to be addictive.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/automatic-you/201208...

Tell that to a person in bed, scrolling through Facebook for hours on end. If the content stopped at some point they would do something else hopefully. Compared to TV the pacing is such that people get hooked like on slot machines.

I highly doubt that showing something like "There are X new great posts from blah blah blah, check them out" instead of using infinite scroll will resolve the problem. At the end of the day one could simply load a million posts (probably needs some code/data optimizations but we are talking here about billion dollar companies) and now it is a finite scroll (EDIT: seems that the bill addresses this case).

Hence only 3 minutes of content per click...

Sure it will. Infinite scrolling triggers a dopamine response just like a slot machine[1]. Its sole purpose is to keep users hooked. Telling the user "you're done now, unless you want to keep going" removes that addictive reaction in the brain.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/automatic-you/201208...

"Dopamine is a chemical released in the brain, often when we experience reward or pleasure. The "dopamine feedback loop" is sometimes held up as evidence that social media can affect our brains in the same way drugs do. The idea is that we become chemically dependent upon bursts of dopamine triggered by people 'liking' our posts on Facebook, or retweeting us on Twitter.

But while it's true that interacting with social media can give your brain a dopamine shot, that does not mean you're getting high. Your brain releases dopamine on an everyday basis.

"Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they're in the same realm as food and sex and learning and all of these everyday behaviours."

This was a year ago - Neither Professor Przybylski nor Amy Orben rule out the possibility that social media can negatively affect human behaviour, but both emphasise the need for further research.

And this will solve it how? All it does is create the awful user experience of having to manually tap continue. If, instead, the law prevented scrolling past a certain limit (which would be very stupid indeed, but this is just a hypothetical), users would simply switch to the next social media app.

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