Being addicted to Big Tech isn’t an individual’s failure, but a societal issue. However, experience shows that large online platforms do not take their responsibility. Therefore, they have to be taken to court. This op-ed was published on April 1st in de Volkskrant.

On March 25th, Meta and Google lost a major lawsuit in the United States. A 20-year-old consumer experienced mental health issues from a young age because of the addictive design of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. She held these companies accountable and won. This lawsuit is an important breakthrough; it proves that Big Tech cannot exploit our attention without consequences.

This wasn't the case for a long time. Large social media platforms know exactly how to draw and retain user attention. Over the span of years they have developed many different techniques to do this.

Dopamine Rush

An example of this is the use of variable rewards, a technique also used by gambling machine manufacturers. By sometimes giving rewards, and withholding rewards other times, users are encouraged to repeat their click and watching behaviour. One example of this technique is infinite scroll; every now and then an amusing clip pops up, but there are plenty of clips that don’t interest you. Still, you keep scrolling endlessly, hoping for better content and looking for the next dopamine rush. On top of that, content that elicits anger or outrage is also shown. This maintains our attention as well, because it triggers our tendency to respond online.

The amusing or upsetting content that is shown to you, is often picked through hyper personalization. Using a detailed user profile, based on your user data, the platform can predict what will interest you or what will make you interact with the platform.

Even if you have finally found the discipline to close the app and put the phone away, these platforms will try and pull you back in by using notifications. These notifications can be misleading as well; sometimes it seems like you’ve received a message from a user, but the notification is actually sent by the platform itself. Research from Bits of Freedom even points to platforms sending more notifications, when you use their apps less (in this case Snapchat).

Getting better at manipulation

There are many more examples of techniques used to get you to excessively use your smartphone. Obviously, this isn’t in your best interest, but in the interest of Big Tech. The longer users are active on a Big Tech platform, the higher the advertising revenue and the more they can learn about you. Using this information, Big Tech companies keep getting better at manipulating you and make it harder for you to resist their addictive techniques.

Of course, we’re responsible for our own actions. But in cases where Big Tech misleads us in such a secretive, deliberate manner on such a massive scale, it becomes very hard for individuals to fight back. Being addicted to Big Tech isn’t an individual’s failure, but a societal issue. Experience shows that the large platforms will not take responsibility and will never make adjustments that stand in the way of optimising their profits.

That is why the American lawsuits are incredibly important. We've seen the first lawsuits on the harmful design of large online platforms in Europe recently as well. Bits of Freedom won a lawsuit against Meta last year, regarding free choice for a non-profiled feed, and in March a similar victory was achieved in Germany against TikTok. These lawsuits are desperately needed, but additional legislation is also crucial.

Europe is currently drafting legislation to better protect consumers from harmful design and misleading practices, which is a very welcome development. But the Big Tech lobby in Brussels against this legislation is massive. This is not surprising, considering this legislation aims to intervene in Big Tech’s revenue model: exploiting our vulnerability and attention. Let's hope that citizen well-being prevails over Big Tech’s wallet on this side of the ocean as well.