By Avery Hartmans, Business Insider
If you own a smartphone, you've likely experienced the feeling: you've got a few moments of downtime so you take out your phone to see what's new.
Maybe you feel an urge to see what your friends are up to, a need to connect to other people. Maybe you want to squeeze in an extra bit of reading or language-learning or mate-finding or game-playing.
[post_ads]Does this mean you are addicted to your smartphone? Not necessarily. There are technical definitions of addiction that don't apply to excessive smartphone use. And using apps on your smartphone is often just a form of wasting time. Before smartphones, you'd likely have wasted time some other way. In fact, Jonathan Kay, chief operating officer of app analytics firm Apptopia, has a term for it: "displaced time."
"I think what's happening is that people are displacing a lot of time that they would spend on TV and spending it on their phones," Kay told Business Insider. "It's not an added time — it's a displaced time from one medium to another."
But there are some key differences about spending our spare time using our phones, rather than other mediums. For one, they're full of content we've chosen for ourselves, rather than content that's chosen for us, like a sitcom on TV, and that can make our phones more enticing, Kay believes.
For another, app makers are using deliberate techniques to attract your attention. They aren't simply relying on you to come to them whenever you have downtime.
"I think people want to be sucked in," Kay said. "Then it becomes a game of who can be more clever at grabbing that attention."
And some app makers use techniques proven to be very successful at luring us in.
Thanks to input from app experts, research on the topic and our own app use, we've identified the tactics used by some of the most popular smartphone apps on the planet to grab your attention. Some of these techniques clearly serve no purpose other than to manipulate your behavior, whereas others are not necessarily insidious and are part of what make the product useful.
But they all have the common goal of reeling you in and holding your attention.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it highlights specific tactics used by specific apps across several categories. Take a look:
Instagram sends dozens of push notifications each week and uses "Stories" to attract you
Out of every app out there, Instagram has got to be one of the most addicting.
There are several reasons you can get hooked on Instagram: the habit-forming nature of taking pictures and videos, the immediate payoff of pretty filters, and the intimacy of building a social network.
But Instagram has its own tactics to keep you engaged.
If you've enabled push notifications on Instagram, you likely receive a message about any number of things: someone's first Story on Instagram, when a Facebook friend has joined the platform, and when one of the people you follow on Instagram is filming live video on the platform.
You can customize and limit these notifications. But it takes some digging through your settings, and the default is to notify you about everything.
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The simple fact is that push notifications, though obvious, actually work. According to research from mobile analytics firm Urban Airship, sending out weekly push notifications can double user retention on iOS devices and have 6-fold increase on Android devices.
"Push notifications are the first line of this strategy," Randy Nelson, an analyst for app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, told Business Insider. "They address you directly and say, 'Hey, come back to the app.' It's the most overt thing these apps do, and it's integral to the process of re-engaging users."
Instagram has a multitude of other ways to grab your attention, most notably within Instagram Stories.
When Stories was originally introduced in August 2016, it was widely considered a copycat of Snapchat's version, also called Stories. But Instagram Stories eclipsed Snapchat in just one year, and it's not hard to see why.
Instagram Stories contain fun face filters, animations, and stickers that can be customized to your location or current temperature. They're a great time-waster on their own.
But it's the way Instagram encourages you to watch Stories at every turn that makes them addicting. Stories are the first thing you see when you open the app — they're housed at the top of the screen — but they also periodically show up in the middle of scrolling through your feed, like in the image above.
And once you're watching one person's Story, you're automatically shepherded into the next person's Story without ever even leaving the interface. If you don't manually swipe or "X" out of Stories, you could end up watching them for minutes on end.
Twitter uses a psychological trick to lure you in — the same one used in slot machines.
One of the most popular methods used by apps and platforms to keep your attention wasn't invented by techies at all. It's a psychological tool often employed in casinos called a "variable ratio schedule."
The concept refers to when an action is rewarded, but at various times. The user doesn't know when they'll be rewarded, just that they will be — and in no particular pattern. That's what slot machines do. Each time you pull the lever, you may win a small payout, the giant jackpot or no reward at all.
As Tristan Harris points out, many apps are no different. Harris, who spent three years working at Google as a "design ethicist," frequently writes about the topic of smartphone addiction and started a non-profit dedicated to the subject. In a 2016 essay, Harris likens the "variable ratio schedule" concept — the slot machine method — to a tactic several apps also employ.
When you swipe your finger downward on Twitter, for example, a spinning wheel indicates that the app is loading more content. You don't know what you're getting, but you're hoping to see something new and something that interests you. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
Twitter also employs this technique in other, more subtle ways. As Vice's Julian Morgans points out, each time you open the Twitter app, the screen is blue for a moment. Then the white Twitter bird pulsates and eventually, the bird widens to reveal your feed. While most people, if they notice this at all, may chalk this up to a slow connection, a lot of traffic to the app, or an old, slow phone, that's not the case. This happens every time you open Twitter, no matter where you are or how fast your device is.
That delay, those few seconds where you're not sure what you're going to see, is enticing. You may be rewarded with new Tweets, or you may see things you already read yesterday. You don't know what you're getting, and it keeps you coming back for more.
Twitter certainly isn't alone in using this trick. Apps like Instagram and Facebook use it, too.
Duolingo takes advantage of our natural "FOMO."
Duolingo, the top language learning app in the App Store, has an altruistic goal: to help people learn a language for free.
Even so, Duolingo uses tactics made popular by games to keep its users coming back.
Upon starting a language course with Duolingo, users have to select a usage goal. The app then tracks how close you are to achieving that goal, and also rewards you for using the app multiple days in a row.
Sensor Tower app analyst Nelson calls it "the FOMO effect" which stand for "fear of missing out." With games or apps like Duolingo, that FOMO effect is applied to achieving rewards.
If you don't complete your sessions on the app every day, you won't maintain a multi-day streak, which means you won't unlock some sort of reward.
By opening the app, you're assuaging that deep-seated fear that you might be missing something important.
LinkedIn taps into the concept of "social reciprocity."
LinkedIn doesn't have the same popularity as apps like Snapchat or Instagram, but it does have a wide reach. LinkedIn is among the top 100 free apps in the App Store, and is the sixth-most-popular social networking app.
There are a few subtle ways that LinkedIn encourages you to spend time in the app, but one that stands out is another well-known psychological tactic.
LinkedIn frequently taps into the concept of social reciprocity— the idea that "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine,' according to Harris, the former Google design ethicist.
For example, when someone sends you an invitation to connect — directly below the invitation is a list of people that you, in turn, could connect with.
"LinkedIn turns your unconscious impulses (to 'add' a person) into new social obligations that millions of people feel obligated to repay," Harris writes. "All while they profit from the time people spend doing it."
The smartphone game "Two Dots" uses color to catch users' attention.
Many apps are often described as being "gamified" — and for good reason. Games have historically done an excellent job of catching interest and getting you to come back again and again.
Their methods are the primary drivers of "app addiction" and the reason why other apps use the tactics — they work.
Case in point: the smartphone game "Two Dots." The game is by no means the most popular smartphone game on the market, but it capitalizes on several clever methods to catch your eye — the trickiest one being that the game's developers frequently change the color of its app icon.
"You look at your phone every day and everything starts to look the same," Apptopia COO Kay told Business Insider. "Any change is exciting. It literally will stop you in your tracks and you'll open the app."
Changing the app color is just one of many tricks, though. "Two Dots" also uses timed challenges, which encourage users to open the app and play before time runs out.
And in recent months, the game started sending out push notifications shortly after 3 PM EST. That's when another popular game, "HQ Trivia," has its daily live show.
The makers of "Two Dots" take a chance that you're already on your phone and if you've lost on your game of HQ, you'll be looking for another distraction.
Facebook banks on its position as one of the world's most-used apps.
Facebook owns Instagram, so it's no surprise the two apps use similar methods to hook you.
[post_ads]Their methods work, too: Facebook is nearly always among the top-five free apps in the App Store, and Facebook remains the most-used app in the US.
"The only reason that Facebook is ever not the most downloaded app is when something comes out that is more 'shiny' for that day," Apptopia's Kay told Business Insider.
One unique method Facebook uses: helping you log into other apps. Rather than creating a new user name and password for each new app you download, you can often use your Facebook account to log in. So having a Facebook account becomes a convenience feature.
In recent years, Facebook has capitalized on that unctuousness by becoming a log book of your life. Its Memories feature keeps track of your daily life over however many years you've had Facebook — for many people, that can be at least 10 years. Memories catalogs every post, photo, and friendship, then alerts you to it each day, causing you to open the app and see what you were doing four or eight years ago.
Facebook also keeps track of friends' birthdays and "friendaversaries," creating custom videos to commemorate however many years you and another person have been Facebook friends.
In many ways, Facebook has positioned itself as more than just a social media app — its now a way to keep track of your social life.
Reading apps like Hooked keep us wanting more.
In April 2017, there was a major spike in a new type of app called "chat stories."
The app Hooked, which initially launched in 2015, became emblematic of the trend. It rose to the top of Apple's top free apps chart, surpassing apps like Bitmoji, Instagram, and Snapchat.
In fact, according to Sensor Tower, Hooked's total downloads grew from about 336,400 in October 2016 to 2.22 million in March 2017, which equates to a 560% jump.
What made Hooked so popular is how easy it was to use. The app delivers fictional stories — either romances or mysteries — in the format of a text message conversation. Tapping the screen delivers the next message in the conversation.
That format in and of itself is addicting, since the next part of the story came in a bite-sized form.
But Hooked also does something unusual: it stops users from reading on by adding a cliffhanger.
Once you reach a certain exciting point in the story, the story is put on pause and Hooked starts a timer, typically for 30 minutes. You can either wait out the timer, or start a subscription for unlimited access.
The subscription is free for seven days, followed by a recurring fee of $5 per week. As Apptopia's Kay noted to Business Insider, a free trial "sucks you in."
"It removes the guilt of paying now and displaces it until later on," Kay said.
Either way, Hooked wins: users are either coming back to the app again and again, or they're paying money to read as much as they want immediately.
Snapchat uses Snapstreaks to keep you hooked.
Anyone who frequently uses Snapchat can tell you about Snapstreaks — and the social importance of maintaining them.
A "streak" is a counter within the Snapchat app that keeps track of how many consecutive days you and a friend have sent a Snap. If you don't Snap the person within 24 hours, the streak dies. For teens in particular, streaks are a vital part of using the app, and of their social lives as a whole.
But there's no reward for maintaining a streak beyond the number itself. For many, it's simply a bragging right to have maintained a streak for a long period of time — some people have even been maintaining streaks for years. With streaks, Snapchat is taking advantage of that "FOMO effect" — if you let a streak die, you'll be missing out on the ability to brag about the lengths of your streaks or to beat your friends.
Streaks aren't the only way Snap keeps its users engaged, however. Snapchat was the original creator of Stories, and introduced face filters into the world. Now, you don't even need to send a message on Snapchat to spend large amounts of time in the app, because you can play with the filters for hours on end.
Plus, Snap has incorporated real-world Bitmoji into the app, meaning that by using the app, you can place an avatar that looks just like you on the table in front of you and have it do things like dance or cook a meal. And because your Bitmoji is personalized, it's that much more fun to use.
HQ Trivia gives you a finite number of chances to win a real, monetary reward.
The concept of a live game show isn't a new concept — network TV has been using that format for decades.
But a live game show streaming directly to your phone (one where you can win money) is a new concept, and that partly explains why HQ Trivia has caught on.
HQ Trivia allows users to compete for real money twice a day, every day. It's that finite number of chances — 12 questions, twice a day — combined with a possibility of a tangible reward that has allowed HQ Trivia to amass more than one million concurrent players on any given day.
The tactic is similar to the slot machine effect: players keep joining the game because this could be the time they actually win, even if their real chances are slim-to-none.
Apptopia's Kay described it to Business Insider as "a little bit of false hope that they're using to reel you in."
Tinder turns finding a love interest into a game.
Tinder — and other dating apps of its ilk like Bumble, Grindr, and Coffee Meets Bagel — have taken a cue from the world of smartphone gaming.
The app, which aims to help couples meet, has turned finding companionship into a game. While dating apps as a category are typically well-represented among the top-grossing apps in the US, Tinder is the No. 3 grossing app in the US overall, according to app intelligence firm App Annie.
It's Tinder's format — swipe left on someone you don't like, swipe right on someone you're interested in — that keeps people hooked. Much like social media apps, Tinder utilizes the variable ratio schedule concept— the slot machine tactic — to encourage you to keep swiping, just in case the next person is your soul mate.
In fact, swiping itself can become addictive — so much so that Tinder put a limit on the number of "likes," or right swipes, you get for free each day. Now, you have to pay for more swipes by opting for Tinder's "Plus" and "Gold" tiers.
In a story in the Washington Post, Jeanette Purvis — a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Hawaii — likened the feeling people get from using Tinder to one drug addicts experience:
"In a study on the brains of drug addicts, researchers found that the expectation of the drug caused more release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine than the drug itself. Similarly, for those who may be expecting the next swipe on Tinder to lead to reward, serial swiping can start to look and feel a lot like addiction."
The intention of music streaming apps like Spotify is to spend a lot of time in them, so including them here may seem a bit counterintuitive.
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But when you consider engagement and how it relates to Spotify, it becomes clear that encouraging users to come back is almost more important than getting them to spend time in the app.
"My likelihood of continuing my subscription depends on how much time I spend in the app," Apptopia's Kay told Business Insider. "So every day I log into Spotify, it aggregates my music in a different way, like a time capsule."
Because Spotify is paying attention to what type of music you frequently listen to, it can put together playlists based on what it knows you already like, essentially repackaging music in a different order or grouped with different artists and giving it a name like, "Daily Mix 1."
It'll even say things like "Made for [your name]," so it feels customized to you.
This tactic is great for users — your auto-generated playlists are full of the music you love — but it's also great for Spotify, since it encourages users to continue paying a monthly subscription.
Spotify is far from the only service that does this, too. If you subscribe to a music service, chances are it's doing everything it can to keep you there.
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