Instagram: Social Media’s Candy Crush Addiction Saga

Eighteen billion dollars in annual ad revenue. One billion monthly users. Thirty minutes of use on average per user each day.

Reader, meet Instagram.

The stock market is already quite aware, and you likely are as well. Looking deeper at the app is a worthy effort and the subject of today’s post. How exactly does it function to draw in that many users for around 2% of their whole day? The answer, in part, is surely head games. While Instagram isn’t an actual game, it has enough under-the-radar and game-inspired elements to help inspire users to return over and over. Today’s discussion is about how Instagram’s teams use their expertise in psychology to subtly shift that behavior.

Psychology of Getting Hooked

I always found it interesting that Facebook employs a litany of psychologists or people with a background in psychology. As of February 2021, when you search “psychology” and “psychologist” for key Facebook companies (Facebook, Facebook AI, Instagram, and WhatsApp), LinkedIn returns 2900 and 119 people results, respectively. The company readily employs so many people with varying degrees of expertise in this critical science of the mind and behavior.

My bet is that most of them know about the power of dopamine.

Dopamine is that special chemical that–and I did not know this until researching this article–promotes motivation (not the standard pleasure as typically referenced). Known as motivational salience, two different types generate opposite behaviors of pulling people toward or pushing people away from actions, objects, and experiences. Incentive salience (pulls toward) causes one to approach an action, object, or event. Meanwhile, aversion salience (pushes away) causes avoidance behavior of the same.

If dopamine confers that kind of interaction within a person, then we must go a bit deeper in the psychology of becoming hooked on Instagram or other social media. But we don’t need to go too far to find the “like button” that we’ve all come to know and love/hate. By receiving that coveted double-tap heart like, we most often experience approval and community. Approval and community create a dopamine interaction which typically generates an incentive salience. And then we enter the approach behavior. The user is pulled toward more interaction on Instagram.

We post another picture, a beautifully colored picture, that receives more likes. Behavioral conditioning begins.

Candy Crush & Casino Connections

With the benefit of this knowledge, Instagram’s use of psychology has resulted in a platform mirroring Candy Crush Saga and casinos in a lot of significant ways. To explore this, we need to understand a few subtle techniques that the gaming industry use to keep people returning:

• Bright colors – Casinos use bright colors to promote alertness, attention, and allure that activate reward centers of the brain (perfect for dopamine to act with incentive salience).
• Labyrinthine floor design – Casinos use maze-like floor designs and psychedelic-patterned carpets to disorient. The carpets, like colors, promote alertness. The floor designs create a barrier to exit and more opportunities to lure customers into additional gaming.
• Incentives to return – Casinos use incentives like buffets, special deals, and shows to encourage return to the casino.
• Strategic jackpots – Casinos use strategic jackpots and access to additional game tiers to create a sense that a larger jackpot is just ahead.
• Sense of community – Casinos create a sense of community at tables and even with slot machine positioning, enabling easy connections with strangers and neighbors.
• Ease of comparison – Casinos design layouts to additionally allow customers to easily compare another person’s winnings to their own winnings.

Candy Crush Saga and it’s 15 game app siblings* use a lot of these techniques as well. Bright colors, labyrinthine game designs, regular incentives to return to the app, levels that create a sense of being so close to the next level/objective, and leaderboards all work to draw players into the games on a returning basis. Like Instagram, the various iterations of Candy Crush Saga are all widely popular and very lucrative.

And as for Instagram? Instagram has a feed of color photos, helped by in-app color filters as well as influencers who create carefully curated photos. The algorithm uses machine learning to determine which photos engage users the most by interaction factors such as cross-app relationship, like history, comment history, direct message history, and time dwelt. The search function creates a carpet-like pattern of photos to draw users into new discoveries. Notifications draw users back to the app, and likes on personal photos are like jackpots that are so close to reaching even more likes. Naturally, the entire app also contains that sense of social community, especially for friends/family or communities of similar interests (often centered on influencers).

Instagram Crushing Conclusions

This topic has been on my mind for two years; and the common threads between Instagram, Candy Crush Saga, and casinos are reasons to exercise self-awareness across all. As Northrop Grumman’s Now innovation blog states, moderation is critical because “comparison is the thief of joy.” The next time you open Instagram, remember those clues that could be pulling you toward more Instagram use. And if you’re a marketing professional, keep these factors in mind as you consider social media advertising. Today’s attention for your brand may turn into tomorrow’s addiction for some unsuspecting person.

*So you checked the asterisk and want to know about these 15 game app siblings? Well, you asked for it. Visualize me taking a deep breath because here we go. Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Friends Saga, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, Pet Rescue Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, Farm Heroes Super Saga, Pyramid Solitaire Saga, Bubble Witch Saga, Bubble Witch 2 Saga, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, Diamond Digger Saga, Diamond Diaries Saga, AlphaBetty Saga, Blossom Blast Saga, and Papa Pear Saga. Apparently, 2-3 words combined with “saga” is a gaming psychology trick as well! Okay, maybe not; but it’s certainly part of the branding. Check out King games on the App Store for the current listing. But don’t download. Unless you need a little kick of dopamine.