Welcome back to Part III of our Social Media Survey analysis of Gen Z and Millennials. In Part I, we examined attitudes towards mindless scrolling. In Part II, we took a closer look at 5 different social media apps and how they made us feel. In this post, we recap the results and shed light onto why the results might be what they are.
Recap
But first, let’s recap! In Parts I and II, we found that a significant portion of our respondents among Gen Z and Millennials struggle with mindless scrolling — 85% of respondents believe they have a problem. A whopping 96% believe they struggle to stop scrolling due to the harmful design factors of social media apps, such as the infinite scroll and autoplay.
Mental health is also negatively impacted by social media, with 64% of respondents saying they believe social media is harmful to their mental health. Procrastination and boredom were listed as the top reasons why respondents mindlessly scroll.
Interestingly, TikTok was among the least used platforms among our respondents. 97% of our respondents reported using Instagram, 55% Facebook, 53% Twitter, 51% TikTok and 42% Snapchat.
When we surveyed users about 5 platforms: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (X), Snapchat and Facebook, we found that only half of them enjoy the time they spend on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, with the number being lower for Twitter and even lower for Facebook.
The platform where users find their time is most valuably spent is Snapchat (61% consider the time spent on it at least somewhat valuable), and TikTok comes out on the bottom (only 38% of users consider the time they spend on the platform at least somewhat valuable).
Moreover, we looked at how people feel after using different social media platforms. TikTok, Instagram and Twitter leave respondents mostly feeling entertained, Snapchat leaves respondents feeling mostly connected with others and Facebook leaves them feeling indifferent or neutral.
It’s important to note that for all platforms except for Facebook, feeling “Indifferent or Neutral” was the second most reported feeling after Entertained.
Why do we mindlessly scroll?
The results show that a large percentage of us think our mindless scrolling is a problem, and it appears that we think that platform features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling contribute majorly to our issues.
At Soulie, we welcome that sort of self-awareness with open arms, as analyzing how those platforms work is the key to understanding *why* we mindlessly scroll. And no, it’s not only because sometimes we’re just lazy.
Indeed, cleverly designed UX features of social apps are built to override our executive function, as any natural “stop moments” are removed from the app. After a video stops playing, you don’t get to think if you want to see another one, as another one begins by itself. In fact, recently, Meta was sued by 41 US States because:
(..) Meta’s designs “deliberately exploited young people’s still developing brains and adolescent vulnerabilities” with features such as the “infinite scroll,” near-constant notifications and alerts, auto-play Stories and Reels, all engineered to instill a fear of missing out (FOMO) and a “slot-machine-type tactic called intermittent variable rewards to keep young people addicted to their app (…)”
Source: 41 states sue Meta alleging that Instagram and Facebook is harmful, addictive for kids, USA Today
And we are certain that this applies to adults just as well as to kids.
You are not enjoying your scroll session, but your feed is endless, making your brain think that surely something interesting will pop up if you just scroll a little more.
In moments like this, we are left to rely on our brains to have the ability to stop us, but we forget that our poor brains have to constantly fight against all the design tricks and nudges in the apps that are specifically designed to make us want to continue and scroll for longer. The mindless scrolling loop we are trapped in causes us to regret spending our time on these apps, as well as to procrastinate, which can in turn lead to more time spent scrolling due to the feelings of shame and hopelessness.
According to the results of the survey, we do leave our scroll sessions feeling entertained on some of those platforms, but at the same time we report we don’t enjoy the time we spend on these platforms half of the time.
It seems like the case among Gen Z and Millennials is the following — the apps are entertaining and take us away from our everyday when we need it. However, the scroll trap the platforms lure us into leave us feeling like our mental health is impacted and our time is not wisely spent.
The current alternatives are going offline, doing a digital detox, or setting screentime limits… Which are all well and good, and should be practiced. But none of those remedies actually address the root cause of why we scroll.
So is the solution just no screen time and no entertainment at all?
At Soulie, we think it’s perfectly okay to be bored and to want to be entertained. Entertainment is a necessary escapism to de-stress for all of us, and it sure feels great when your feed happens to hit that magic spot where every post or video is hilarious.
However, there is a fine line between being entertained by short-form content for a while, and falling into a passive consumption state where we no longer are in control of what we do and how we spend time. A quick scroll session meant to destress us can easily turn into an hours-long rabbit hole which in turn can make us feel even more stressed, as we did not act as we had intended to. Staying in control of how we spend time on those platforms is made hard on purpose. And when we feel like we are wasting our time but struggle to change our habits, it comes as no surprise that our mental health can take a hit.
The only stakeholders who benefit from us scrolling for longer than we want are the social media companies themselves. The longer your scroll session, the more ads they can serve you, and the more money they can make. Our attention is an extremely valuable currency, and they compete with each other for it so they can run their business and make money for their shareholders.
That’s gloomy af. Where do we go from here?
From the results, it seems like mindless scrolling is here to stay. We don’t necessarily like it, but we do it. And as long as social media platforms keep working on getting all the engagement out of us they possibly can to show us ads, we will be stuck in mindless scrolling loops for as long as those apps exist.
However, at Soulie, we know that an alternative is possible. A radically new approach to how we discover content online can break the status quo.
Personal algorithms.
Instead of platform algorithms deciding what we see and how much of it, we need to take back control and be able to decide for ourselves how much and of what we want to see. This is why we have pioneered the concept of personal algorithms — algorithms that you have control over and to which you can give inputs at any time to customize your online experience to what *you* want it to be.
And at Soulie, we are creating just that.
We’re building the first social media app that is good for your brain and runs entirely on personal discovery algorithms. You can create and tweak your very own algorithm and tell it to bring you content that supports your goals.
The app also comes with stop-moments built in — your feed is never bottomless. It is limited to a certain number of posts to keep you from scrolling mindlessly. And while you can access new content at any time, the app nudges you to do it by really thinking about what it is that you are after when you want to discover content. You need to let the algorithm know what you’d like to see so it can bring it to you, it will never make you waste your time on content you have not asked for.
Unlike the platforms designed to keep you passively entertained, Soulie is designed for active discovery, putting you in control of your online experience.
So when will Soulie happen, and how will it work?
Building out our vision will take time but we are already well on our way.
We built Soulie 1.0, a content aggregator where you can create and manage your personal algorithm to access articles from multiple sources across the internet, to test out how people react to personal algorithms. Turns out — really heckin’ well! With over 4500 app downloads in just 2 months, it is clear people are curious about what personal algorithms can do for them.
Now, we’re in the process of building Soulie 2.0 where we add features to make the Soulie experience social, moving towards our goal of building a social media app where content discovery is run by personal algorithms.
When we launched Soulie 1.0, we asked users to set goals for each session they spent on Soulie. The most commonly chosen goal among our users was to “Learn new things”. That’s why in the future, Soulie will move even more strongly towards supporting you enhancing your knowledge about all the things you want to know more about. In the future, your algorithm will work hand-in-hand with your personal knowledge map, helping you identify and fill gaps in your knowledge on the topics you care about.
We work day and night to bring our vision for the furure — one where your personal algorithm can bring you content from any platform that aggregates it — to life.
The ride ahead of us is long, but it will be a good one.
And the best part is — you can join us as we make this dream a reality by becoming a Beta tester.
So join our Beta today and come along for the ride, will you?
Team Soulie
Triin Kask, Ann Margit Järvekülg, Andres Tiko, Robin Kütt, Otto Suits, Margus Engso
