In 2002, American psychologist B.J. Fogg, a researcher at Stanford University, published Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. For the first time, a new field was formally defined: the design of digital technologies intentionally created to influence human behavior. Even then, Fogg warned that this emerging capability would inevitably raise two fundamental questions: Who would control these technologies, and in whose interests would they be used?
Over the following two decades, the answer came from the industry itself. Digital platforms began building products around algorithmic recommendations, persistent notifications, autoplay, and infinite scrolling, turning users' attention into their primary economic resource. At the same time, scientific research examining the effects of these mechanisms on human behavior and mental health expanded year after year.
It took nearly twenty-six years for this evolution to receive its first major political response. Australia became the first country to attempt, through legislation, to restrict an entire category of users from accessing major social media platforms through what the law rather modestly described as "reasonable steps."
When the creators sounded the alarm
The earliest warnings did not come from politicians or regulators. They came from within the industry itself.
In 2017, Sean Parker, Facebook's first president, stated that the platform's mechanisms exploited "a vulnerability in human psychology." Likes, comments, and social validation were designed not merely to facilitate communication, but to encourage users to return as frequently as possible and spend increasing amounts of time on the platform. That same year, Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's former Vice President of User Growth, described these mechanisms as "dopamine-driven feedback loops," warning that they were changing the way people relate to one another and undermining the functioning of society. A year later, Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of virtual reality, argued that major social media platforms had become true "behavior modification empires," built to continuously observe, predict, and influence user behavior. In 2019, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, described the competition among major platforms as "a race to the bottom of the brain," arguing that commercial success was being achieved by stimulating humanity's most primitive psychological mechanisms: curiosity, social validation, fear, outrage, and unpredictable rewards. In just a few years, the language used to describe the same industry had changed dramatically. What had been presented in 2002 as "Persuasive Technology" was now being described—even by some of its own creators—as the exploitation of psychological vulnerabilities, behavior modification, and a competition for human attention.
A Picture That Has Become Normal
The scene has become so commonplace that we barely notice it anymore. Entire families sit around the same table without speaking to one another. Parents push their children's strollers without looking up from their phones. Teenagers cross the street with their eyes fixed on a screen. Friends meeting for coffee spend more time following an algorithm's recommendations than talking to each other.
At the same time, viral challenges have sent teenagers to hospitals, while other incidents have ended tragically as young people sought just a few seconds of online attention. What initially appeared to be simply a new way of communicating has gradually begun to reshape how we spend our time, how we concentrate, how we build relationships, and even how we perceive reality. The impact of these platforms on language and communication will be examined in a separate article.
What the Largest Scientific Review Published So Far Says
In 2025, the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin published the meta-analysis "Feeds, Feelings, and Focus," one of the most comprehensive reviews ever conducted on the effects of short-form video platforms. The study brought together 71 independent studies involving 98,299 participants, providing one of the strongest scientific overviews currently available.
Its conclusions are remarkably consistent. Heavy use of these platforms is associated with reduced attention span, diminished self-control and impulse control, poorer cognitive performance, higher levels of anxiety and stress, and an overall decline in mental well-being. This meta-analysis is neither an isolated experiment nor the opinion of a single research team. It synthesizes the findings of dozens of independent studies and currently represents one of the most robust scientific references for understanding the effects associated with intensive use of platforms built around algorithmic recommendations and short-form video content.
The First "Reasonable Steps" Law
After more than two decades of research—and warnings coming even from within the technology industry—Australia decided to intervene. It became the first country to attempt, at a national level, to restrict children's access to major social media platforms.
The initiative did not emerge by chance. In the years leading up to the law, research, parliamentary inquiries, and public debate repeatedly identified the same platform features as responsible for excessive attention capture: infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, autoplay, notifications, and other persuasive design mechanisms. During the same period, European institutions also began openly discussing addictive design, suggesting that the problem lay not only in the content displayed, but also in the way these platforms were engineered. Australia, however, chose a different approach. Rather than intervening directly on these features, the law introduced a minimum age of 16 years—the highest age limit adopted by any country at that time for access to major social media platforms. Platforms were not required to remove infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, or autoplay. They were simply required to prevent people under the age of 16 from accessing their services through what the legislation referred to as "reasonable steps." At first glance, the solution appears logical. If a product is considered harmful to children, you prevent children from accessing it. But this is where the first shift in perspective appears. The problem identified by researchers concerned the product itself and the way it influences users' behavior. The legislative solution did not modify the product; instead, it attempted to restrict access for only one category of users. In other words, the law did not change the mechanisms considered problematic. It attempted to change who was allowed to use them.
