Tik Tok’s design clearly taps into psychological principles that drive addiction. The infinite scroll and unpredictable content rewards work like slot machines in a dopamine-driven feedback loop. This keeps users glued to their screens, often without realizing how much time has passed. The For You feed continuously adapts to like a million data tracking points, and spits out a constant stream of whatever content it deems most likely to keep you scrolling. Neuroscientists have pointed out that heavy TikTok use can reduce attention spans and increase the need for instant gratification which are effects tied to dopamine stimulation. Obviously bytedance isn’t going to publicize the proprietary research they used to accomplish this. But the app clearly uses these engagement-maximizing techniques. That also goes for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit (they wish lol) and the rest of them. But in tiktok’s case, it’s an export from an adversarial nation, and you only need to look at the internally approved version of tiktok for Chinese users, which promotes a completely different kind of content.