The Bewitching Power of TikTok

How long does it take to build a habit??

That’s the question everyone’s asking, following the leak of a TikTok document that seems to suggest it could take as little as 35 minutes before you’re hooked on the platform.

TikTok is currently caught up in a legal battle with 14 US states, who claim it harms kids because it’s designed to be addictive. Internal comments on the issue recently became available by accident when redacted content was made public. This revealed TikTok’s own research showing the number of views they think it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos.

This, according to authorities, could mean as little as 35 minutes’ use resulting in a TikTok habit. But how does this fit with what we know about habit formation from other research?

Repeat as Necessary

It really is the golden question for anyone wanting to generate new habits among customers or users. How long does it take for a behavior to stick?

One study that attempted to answer this was conducted by Phillippa Lally at University College London.

She asked participants to select a behavior they were hoping to make a daily habit (e.g. healthy eating, meditation etc.). Participants recorded each day whether or not they had performed the action and how automatic the behavior felt.?

It took an average of 66 consecutive days for the action to feel automatic, with a pretty wide range of 18 to 254 days. Habit-forming happened more quickly for simple actions (e.g. drinking a glass of water after breakfast) than for more elaborate routines (e.g. doing 50 sit-ups).

Of course, we can’t really equate watching a fleeting TikTok video with 15 minutes of daily exercise.? Viewing is quick and easy, so you'd expect it to be at the lower end of the spectrum. But even so, 35 minutes to create an automatic behavior is much, much faster than Lally’s 66 days.

Maybe it’s because — for most people —? it’s a lot more fun watching video content than it is doing 50 sit-ups, especially when that content has been precision-targeted to your interests. But there’s something else going on too.

The Irresistible Unknown

When you begin your daily exercise, or take the first sip of water, or whatever wholesome action you’re hoping to build into your routine, you know exactly how it’s going to go. There won’t be any surprise flavor at the bottom of the glass. No post-workout massage, unless you’ve pre-booked. Nothing exciting or surprising about your activity.

But consider TikTok. When you swipe to your next video, you have no idea what’s coming.

In this way, TikTok has effectively harnessed the immense and addictive power of uncertain rewards.

There’s plenty of evidence to back this up. The principle was first observed in the 1930s in animal studies by psychologist BF Skinner, who invented a box that would dispense food when an animal bumped against the lever.

Animals — often rats — quickly learned that pressing the lever would earn them a treat. The psychologist used the principle to train rabbits to complete tasks, moving on from simply pressing a lever to picking up a dollar and posting it through a slot.

But a significant new finding was that when the food only came sometimes, but not for every instance of the desired behavior, animals were more motivated to act. It was the first demonstration of the power of uncertain rewards.?

The effect is just as potent in people. Proof of this comes from Nina Mazar at the University of Toronto, who ran an experiment in 2015 to test the influence of uncertain rewards on snack-buying behavior.

For two weeks, the researchers ran sales promotions in a vending machine. Buyers were given a choice between paying a discounted price of $0.50 per snack or paying the regular price of $0.75, with a 1 in 3 chance of getting the treat for free.

These promotions are mathematically the same, so you might expect there to be no difference in uptake. But this isn’t what happened. Over the two weeks, 84 snacks were purchased with the fixed discount option. And 120 were sold with the unpredictable discount option — that’s 43% more. Customers clearly preferred the chance to win big(ger) over a smaller but certain reward.

This is the key mechanic involved in gambling and it’s what makes it addictive. Any win, however small, releases a dopamine hit and activates the reward center of the brain. We get hooked. And the same thing is going on with TikTok. The anticipation of what’s coming next is irresistible? — there’s always the possibility that the next video will be super-entertaining, or feature the one perfect hack that will change our lives for good. It’s the prospect of this that keeps us perpetually swiping up.

This explains why TikTok has recently been found to be the most addictive of all social media.? And why, by their own analysis, it might take as little as 35 minutes to get a serious TikTok habit.

Maybe you don’t want to be as addictive as TikTok. But you can still harness the power of uncertain rewards. One easy way to do this is to copy the vending machine mechanism — rather than offer 10% to 100% of your customers, consider 100% off to 10% of them. It’ll cost the same — but your customers will be far more drawn in.

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