Social Media Addiction: How to Use It to Build A Strong Business
Can you please tell me why do we scroll the social media so much that we never want to leave it and why we spend hours on video games like PUBG and Free Fire, what we get from it? You will say entertainment, it’s fun man it’s fun!
But why is it so much fun, what reward do you get by using those? That is tough to tell. In this article, you will learn how big companies have hooked you in this social media addition game and what you can do to get out of it?
Let’s take a real-life example…
How Sara Got Hooked in This Social Media Addiction Game
Sara, a wonderful good looking woman who was in college got hooked on Instagram. She posts dozens of pictures and videos every day. She says I like it, it feels good, Instagram gives me new amazing things that I don’t want to miss.
Not just Sara a lot of people got hooked in this social media game they are addicted to it. They check their social media about 10–12 times a day. They scroll, watch videos, see photos, consume information, and a lot more. Because they liked it very much, it feels good.
Not just Instagram, every social media on this planet Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest everywhere people are getting hooked and they can’t get out of it. Here I am not going to talk about the pros and cons of this social media addiction game but I am going to show you how they did it, how they hooked you in the terms of an entrepreneur’s view.
- On Twitter, we go to find new trends, new news, what’s happening around us?
- In Facebook, we go to check what my friends are doing, what are they watching, what are they liking?
- And on TikTok, not music we go to see girls or boyz because “Sex is a silent motivator”.
But can you please tell me why we do this, how it became a habit? Because we don’t want to miss anything. As Daniel Kanhaman said in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, humans are motivated by two facts pain and pleasure. They will do everyone to avoid the pain and to gain pleasure.
The loss of an amazing thing ignites the fear in us and we open the app to never miss anything. Whenever we feel bored we open it up, whenever we feel down we open it. Because we try to find a way to handle those bad emotional situations, we want to avoid that pain, social media does it with pleasure. We repeat the process and it becomes a habit, we get hooked slowly. But how did they do it?
Nil Eyal said (author of the Hooked)…
“The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user’s pain by creating an association. So the user identifies the company’s product or service as a source of relief”
To hook Sara the app designers went through 4 steps powerful psychological steps…
According to Charles Duhhig (author of the Power of habit), it’s Cue, Routine, and Reward.
First, they give Sara a trigger, a Cue internal or an external (we will talk about this down the article) then Sara uses it means she took Action, she loves it means she got the Reward and she continues to use means she invests the time there and then her boredom or fear will motivate her to use the app again and again because for her it’s a source of relief. And then it will become a habit.
Confused! don’t be because now we will go deep to understand the hooked model completely starting with the Trigger, how can we use it as an entrepreneur, how can we use it to make our product successful?
Triggers are divided into 2 categories Internal triggers and External triggers. Every social media addiction game is created to install the Internal triggers in you but if you don’t learn how to use the external triggers then there are no Internal triggers, it will not work. First, know how to use the external one then install the internal one.
4 Steps to Install The Social Media Addiction
External triggers are divided into 4 categories…
1. Paid Triggers
Paid triggers are used to attract a new customer or someone who is not using the app right now i.e advertisement, search engine marketing, and other paid channels. All are giving you an external signal.
When you saw an add of Instagram in any place of the internet you install it or if it has already installed on your phone you open it up. Then their work is done, you continue to use the app again and again. If you got distracted they will trigger you again to use it.
Paid triggers are used to attracts new customers and by applying other triggers they influence you to continue that and to get hooked in it.
2. Earned Triggers
In Earned triggers, you don’t have to pay any money, it will happen automatically i.e a viral video, get featured in-app store, get featured on a big Facebook page, or get featured on related apps in play store. These all are Earned triggers which means you have earned it over time without spending any money for it.
But the problem is this kind of triggers do not last long. Day by day the effect fades away. To work the Earned triggers effectively the user must complete an unpredictable task. For example, when checking the Facebook feeds we see something super interesting, some video that can’t scroll down without watching it. The video just grabs out attention which we did not predict earlier, but we saw it completely.
So earned triggers can do wonders if you can make it unpredictable.
3. Relationship Triggers
Relationship triggers are the best way to grab people’s attention and to forward them to the next level. For example, your friend says buddy what is your Instagram ID, or any influencer says follow us on Instagram. These type of triggers tells you how important Instagram is and why you must install it now.
I am not saying it’s bad although it helps people to stay updated with the current trend, in the end, this is an influence. That the Relationship trigger for you.
People don’t say search it on the internet they say Google it! Only for this word of mouth, the tech companies have become so big. Take any company you want who made it big in the world of the social game all had impedimented the Relationship trigger.
But, trust is a must thing in this trigger. Because without trust people will not recommend it to their friends and family and the methods will not work properly. So in Relationship “trigger trust is a must”.
4. Owned Triggers
It means the app icon on your phone, the notification you are getting, the email newsletter everything is an owned trigger. They own some of your attention because you have enabled the notification, you have subscribed to their email newsletter and the app icon on your phone front page always reminds you to use it and to get onto it. If you don’t install that or never signup for the email then there are no Owned triggers.
Basically an Owned trigger is a small external trigger that forces you to use the app again. But all the external things must lead the customer to an Internal trigger.
Nir Eyal says “internal triggers manifest automatically in your mind. Connecting the internal triggers with a product is the brass ring of a habit-forming product”.
For example, when you are feeling bad, felling any boredom, getting afraid to lose something interesting like Sara or any kind of emotional pain then you open the app try to get out of that bad feeling. When this happens it will become a habit because you do it over and over again.
You just need a small push from an external source to install the habit and then you will do it by yourself automatically. Sounds too manipulating? Ya, it is. That’s how they do it. Don’t get me wrong but this is the psychology behind the whole social media addictions. Know it and use it…
But this is only the first step of a habit-forming product there is more to make this work effectively. If a habit-forming product does not contain a Reward system then it does not matter how good the product is, who beautiful the design is, people will not use it. If they did not get the reward then they will not invest more time in it and the product will fail to create a habit.
3 Psychological Steps to Get Addicted to Social Media
That reward is the thing that holds us, pushes us to use the app again and again. If we leave it still it will not ever leave us. We will again go back there for that excitement the reward gives us.
So before we get deep in the reward system we need to know how our brain feels the pleasure, how we get the reward?
A Super Social Experiment
In 1940 two researchers James Olds and Peter Milner got an amazing thing accidentally. They discovered how a small part of our brain excites us to get the reward by releasing dopamine from our brain (a brain hormone).
So they prepare an experiment, they implemented a small electrode in a mouse’s brain in that particular place. When the mouse press the liver he gets an amazing pleasure in the Nucleus Accumbens. The mouse likes it very much. Slowly he got hooked on it because it feels awesome.
The addition was so high that the mouse was ready to ignore the food just get another electric shook. The scientist got a miracle. After a few years, they experimented with it with humans and the result is the same.
Social media addiction is in sex, in delicious food, in the bargain, and wherever things that make us feel good. Science described the reward system in 3 categories…
- Rewards of Tribe
- The rewards of Hunt, and
- The Reward of Self
In the self-reward, we will explore the PUBG, Free Fire, and all other video games but before that, we need to go through the tribe and the hunt which implemented by Facebook wisely…
1. The Tribe
The Tribe is a kind of reward system that helps you to feel appreciated, attractive, important, and included. The likes in our Facebook posts, people’s comments, tags, everything made us feel connected.
If people are appreciating my work if they make me feel loved then as a writer I will produce more and more content for them.
But why do people like posts? What do they get? They get the self-reward. that we will discuss in a bit but before that let’s explore hunts.
One important note, whatever I am telling here is not just limited to Facebook its working everywhere. we are using Facebook as an example nothing else.
2. The Hunts
In the hunts, we try to find something interesting something new, that’s why we scroll the Facebook page. We want to see new interesting posts, new interesting funny videos we get the entertainment in a new way.
We, humans, love to hunt, we love the feeling of new. Those who usees Pinterest know Pinterest is an image search engine where people love to hunt new things, new products, new infographics. Research says an average user who visits Pinterest on mobile devices scroll about 60 pages at a time before they leave the app. That happens because of the hunt.
The same things happen with Quora. When scrolling on Quora we find something that is highly co-related to our interest and we can not ignore it. We read that completely. I did it by myself, I scroll and scroll reding looking at the picture especially funny memes. I just scroll down trying to find something new to read on, something new. You can find me on Quora by typing Digital Investing.
Now move onto self-reward, the PUBG formula.
3. The Self Reward
In self-reward we reward ourselves. Just tell me what do you get by solving a puzzle? Just a good feeling, a self-achievement. What you get in PUBG by achieving the chicken dinner? Just a self-fulfillment a self-pleasure.
I am not talking about those people who got famous by this I am talking about those who just play it for fun. Thay never plays for the fame or for the money they play it for the reward. The reward excites them to play it again.
Plus there is one more influence (the social proof) that influences them more to play it. That different thing. I have already written an article on the social proof you can read it here:
Social Proof the Way to Get More Sale
Not just in PUBG or Free Fire in every video game it happens to take COC, take Candy Crush, Minecraft, Call Of Duty in every game this reward system is working super fine.
Final Word
First, try to implement those triggers and then help them to take action on it and then give them the reward they need, hit the pain point and then their boredom will force them to use that app, again and again, that is their investment.
I hope now you have a complete understanding of these social media addiction games and now you know how to build a habit-forming product and also you know how not to get hooked in this mess. Let me know how you fell about it, leave a comment below.
The video to get more practical…
Thank you.
Najmus Sheikh.
Originally published at https://digitalinvesting.in on July 23, 2020.
