Dr. Anna Lembke

Things as simple as short form video

Short form video is highly reinforcing for our brains.

It's just, we love it.

You know, these moving images, the colors, the sounds, often integrated with story and narrative.

But what's really key here is the interactive aspect of it.

So the way in which my engagement with the device and the medium actually changes the

the medium.

And this is where the algorithmic feed is so key because the algorithms are designed to learn what we've liked before and continue to give us what we've liked with just a little bit of novelty.

So the longer I spend on the platform, the more I change the platform to be tailored for me.

And that tailoring really contributes to its addictive potential.

Because again, it's narrowing that drug of choice down to exactly the types of videos that, you know, I like to watch or, you know, whatever that engagement is.

Plus we have the likes and the followers and the shares and the comments.

Again, it's this sense, what is sometimes called in neuroscience, the sense of grip or more colloquial, the sense of control.

What is so key to addiction and what so many people don't appreciate is that addiction at heart is really not about escape.

It's really about control.

It's about trying to create a world within a world, especially if my world is really chaotic, in which I have this fine-tuned control of my perception and action loops and

Such that I can manage and change my experience with my input.

Okay, so this is what I find so paradoxical in a way is that the third thing is

the uncertainty or the mystery.

So at the same time that we want to experience grip, right, or we want to experience this sense of fine-tuned control where I can do this action and change the way I feel, if that's all there was, we would get bored.