> These companies have hired focus groups, marketing experts, psychologists, and countless design teams to get people hooked on their platform. Are we really surprised?

I don't think that this is the problem. From what I know, hackernews doesn't hire any marketing experts, psychologists or focus groups. It doesn't even support images. I was more addicted to this site than any other, despite the lack of psychological tricks.

And there are many sites that DO employ full psychological warfare teams that I completely ignore. Tinder seemed fully committed to forcing repetitive user engagement. And I dropped that site after about two days, psychologists or not. If all it took to force engagement was a certain list of UI tricks, every funded social site would be able to do it.

I don't think there's a single root cause or an off switch for social media. This phenomenon is here to stay, for better or worse. I think that we will adapt as a species but there's no going back.