By skyforbes 
TikTok did the impossible.
It went head-to-head with the biggest corporations in Silicon Valley (Meta and Google) and won.
The reason is simple. They’re scarily effective at keeping people on the app.
But this is not a David vs Goliath business success story. Because this insane growth comes at a massive cost… that you pay. Every time you open the app for “a minute”, you’re wrestling with a system that is designed to hijack your life.
Now, let’s start by analyzing a game with an almost zero chance of winning, yet people lose billions on it.
It can help us understand that while the technology is new, the underlying mechanism is not.
Slot Machines
These machines are a huge cash cow for the casino because they use a potent psychological tool called intermittent reinforcement.
These machines give a small win, free spins, or bonuses at RANDOM INTERVALS.
You never know when you’ll get these bonuses, and you don’t know if you’ll hit the jackpot or at least the mini-jackpots.
This reinforces the idea that you need to keep playing because who knows? The next spin might be a huge win.
Another powerful tool is the near-wins. It’s where the symbols are very close to forming a winning combination but fall short. Research shows that near-wins trigger your brain’s dopamine system almost as much as actual wins.
Everything is designed to keep you focused on the game… so much that you lose track of time.
Even the simple act of pushing the button and seeing all those colorful shapes and lights releases dopamine. Because it gives you a sense of control.
However, you have no control. And there’s no such thing as luck coming to rescue either; there’s only the good ol’ principle of cause and effect.
You play, you lose.
At those moments, you are powerless. You have temporarily lost the freedom to choose.
I know it seems weird. At least, we are choosing to play, right?
But are you?
Think about it… You know deep down that you will lose much more if you play. So the rational thing to do is to admit defeat and walk away.
Yet, you can’t seem to stop.
You don’t even think about stopping.
Not until you have no money left and the spell is broken.
And of course, you feel like shit afterward.
That, my friend, is addictive behavior.
Which leads us to…
TikTok Addiction
Most of the time, TikTok will serve generic videos. Things that make you laugh, curious, cringe, or angry.
You know, things that are interesting enough to keep you scrolling. But once in a while, it will recommend what I like to call mini-jackpot videos.
These are videos that impact you on a visceral level. They touch on fears and desires you barely admit to yourself, or perhaps you don’t even know you have.
Now, this raises an interesting question: How does the app know? How does it uncover the things buried in your unconscious mind?
Well, there’s a study that can help us understand how these apps seem to know us so well.
Researchers analyzed Facebook profiles — what pages people liked and what content they posted or consumed. From this, they assigned each participant a personality type based on the OCEAN Model.
For example, participants with high openness to experience tend to like Salvador Dalí, meditation, or TED talks — while participants with high extraversion tend to like partying, a reality show star, or dancing.
The study showed that Facebook’s algorithm only needs to analyze 300 likes, and it will judge your personality with greater accuracy than your own partner.
Keep in mind that this study was conducted in 2015, and since then, the algorithms have become much more sophisticated.
Plus, TikTok collects a significant amount of data — from the content you consume to basic information to IP address to biometric identifiers. It also gathers data on the websites you visit, even when you’re not using the app.
With this arsenal of data, TikTok can identify our psychological motivations and recommend content more likely to keep us on the app.
Not what we want to see or need to see, but what keeps us addicted.
This leads us to…
The Mini-Jackpot Videos
The Wall Street Journal conducted an interesting experiment.
They created 100 bot accounts, each programmed with a specific set of interests.
But the only information TikTok had about these bots was their date of birth and IP address. From there, TikTok began by recommending generic viral videos to test the waters and figure out what each “user” liked.
It watched for patterns — where they paused, what they rewatched — and then adjusted its recommendations accordingly.
It took 40 minutes to 2 hours to figure out their interests.
Here’s where it gets problematic. One bot, named Kentucky_96, was designed to show interest in videos about sadness and depression.
The algorithm responded by feeding it a relentless stream of depressive content. Each rewatch pushed it deeper into a rabbit hole of despair.
Same thing with other interests. It will push you into a narrow view of a particular subject, so what is left to consume but extreme content?
What’s worse is that eventually you’ll seek out places on the internet where such people hang out, like Reddit, 4Chan, Telegram, or Facebook groups.
This can make you very vulnerable to radicalization.
In my view, this is intentional. It’s not in their best financial interest to promote balanced content or videos that show you a way out of a particular problem. In fact, it’s good that you’re miserable.
I mean, think about it… Would McDonald’s tell you to stop coming to the restaurant every day or to order a smaller meal because, if you continue down this road, you’ll have serious health problems?
Of course not. That would be ridiculous.
First, they would probably get sued for discrimination.
Second, it’s not in their interest to do so.
Their best customers are those who consume a lot of unhealthy food.
They’re like, Do you want to continue?
Yeah.
Then go ahead. You are free to make your own choices. In fact, I’ll make the meals cheaper and larger so it’s easier for you to get addicted.
In other words, the more self-destructive you are, the more profitable you are for them. It’s the same reasoning with TikTok and other giant corporations.
You have to admit that TikTok’s strategy is evil, but brilliant.
By keeping you anxious, stressed, and tired, your mental defenses go down, and you are less likely to snap out of the state of flow. You are completely immersed in the app.
And it gets worse… Even when you are not using the app, your mind goes to those mini-jackpot videos, because they affect you on a deep, visceral level.
Can you really turn your brain off from those topics and focus on your work or on the conversation?
Probably not. You’ll be distracted, and that will affect your performance in everything you do.
Then you’ll get upset about why things are not going well in your life. This feeling sucks, so you need to do something to improve your mood or get inspired.
And what do you do to feel better?
That’s right.
You open the app and start scrolling.
You don’t realize that the app is one of the biggest sources of stress.
It’s like smoking. You think it calms you down, but it actually makes you more irritated and anxious.
Eventually, you reach a level where you’re not scrolling for fun anymore. It’s more like scratching an itch that never goes away. And as time goes on, that itch gets worse. You find yourself scrolling more and more, not to feel good, but to make the discomfort stop.
In conclusion, TikTok is essentially a digital slot machine. It uses intermittent reinforcement, a simple design that reduces mental effort, and it has an infinite loop of content.
The goal is to create a fluid experience where you lose track of time.
However, a fluid experience promotes rigid thinking.
And rigid thinking is connected to mental health problems.
The more you suffer, the more you use the app for relief, which worsens your situation…
In other words, the more broken you are, the better customer you become.
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