This might be an overused reference, but if you’re familiar with the movie WALL-E, you already know what eventually happens to the human race.
Spoiler alert: At the end of that Pixar film, the humans all float around in stasis pods so they don’t have to walk or put any effort into life.
There are a few signs of why that might be prescient. For starters, companies like Amazon can deliver coffee beans to your front door on a set schedule so you never have to place an order. A few years ago, Netflix introduced the option to play the next episode in a television series without having to click play.
Now, TikTok is about to kill doomscrolling. The company announced the feature last year but now it’s available for select users and rolling out to everyone eventually. Using auto scroll means you don’t have to flip through videos. To see if you have access, just press and hold on any clip and look for the auto scroll option.
Similar to how Netflix plays the next episode, you can watch clips on your phone one after the other without having to lift a finger. YouTube offered a similar autoplay feature way back in 2014. Social media apps have resisted the idea, knowing that mindless scrolling — flipping down on the screen with your thumb — gives you a dopamine hit. Similar to a slot machine in Las Vegas, you put minimal effort into an action but see an immediate reward. That’s what keeps us hooked.
Still, even that slight movement requires effort. You have to move your thumb, press the screen slightly, and flip. There must be a better way, right? With auto scrolling, at least your eyes are doing something to earn the reward. It tricks your brain into paying attention for a split second and rewarding you with dopamine. Often, it doesn’t matter if the video is that compelling — it only matters that it’s new.
Auto scroll is an interesting development, mostly because it’s a sign of how lazy we’ve become with our apps. I can also predict what will happen next.
When Apple introduces the Vision Pro headset in a few weeks, there’s a good chance (based on all of their previous successes) that thousands of us will strap on this new device. It’s thankfully not as immersive as virtual reality, which means fewer headaches. I’m picturing a future scenario where we use social media apps on these headsets that auto scroll. That means we won’t even have to hold the phone or really do anything at all — WALL-E stasis pods here we come.
And yet, here’s where things get dicey for the social media companies: I think auto scroll might backfire. With VR, our brains can’t quite maintain a deep level of immersion for long. I’ve found that VR makes me sick after about 20 minutes. One reason, at least for me, is that I start to feel like, since I’m not physically engaged with the virtual world, I want to escape back to reality.
Social media companies want to keep us hooked on their apps as long as possible, but this automated scrolling feature might be a step in the wrong direction. When we don’t have to do anything but sit idle and stare at a screen (whether it’s a phone in our hand or a headset), our brains lapse into fatigue. We want to escape.
I have the same hopes for how humans will object to pervasive artificial intelligence and other forms of innovation that remove the human element. We won’t go to sleep so easily. My hope is that features like auto-scrolling, AI algorithms that do all of the work for us, and even that Netflix auto-play feature will eventually lead to a revolt. We’ll finally wake up and realize we’ve become mindless zombies.
"auto" - Google News
January 21, 2024 at 10:11PM
https://ift.tt/Jws8a7m
TikTok Launches Auto Scrolling. Will It Replace Doomscrolling? - Forbes
"auto" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Nj0cPV
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment