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Focus & Productivity

The page that never ends

Why the feed has no bottom, and how to build your own · 13 min

In 2006, a young designer removed the bottom of the web page to save you a click. Years later he said he felt guilty. Why the feed is so hard to leave, what a sealed envelope in rural India has to do with it, and how to put a stopping point back into your day.

Takeaways

  • The endless feed was designed as a convenience: it removed the bottom of the page, and with it the moment where carrying on becomes a choice. Two of the designers behind today's feeds have said they regret the downsides.
  • In small studies of phone users in the United States, sessions mostly ended when something outside the app cut in; in one field study of a hundred and forty-six labourers' households in rural India, splitting weekly savings into two sealed envelopes instead of one led to about seventy percent more saved.
  • Something to try: before you open the app, decide where you'll stop, and when you get there, choose again.

Chapters

  1. The page that never ends0:17
  2. The people who built it2:07
  3. The missing stop3:43
  4. A breath at the door6:02
  5. Hear it done8:03
  6. Build yours9:31
  7. The answer11:17

References

  1. Andersson, H. (BBC Panorama) — Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users(2018)
  2. Lewis, P. — 'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia (The Guardian)(2017)
  3. Tran, J. A., Yang, K. S., Davis, K., & Hiniker, A. — Modeling the engagement-disengagement cycle of compulsive phone use(2019)
  4. Rixen, J. O., et al. — The loop and reasons to break it: Investigating infinite scrolling behaviour in social media applications and reasons to stop(2023)
  5. Soman, D., & Cheema, A. — Earmarking and partitioning: Increasing saving by low-income households(2011)
  6. Cheema, A., & Soman, D. — The effect of partitions on controlling consumption(2008)
  7. Grüning, D. J., Riedel, F., & Lorenz-Spreen, P. — Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec(2023)