Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
So...Just how Addictive is Snapchat?
69 Plays9 days ago
Snapchat has built an empire on engineered social obligation — and the Streak is the load-bearing wall. In this episode, Andrew applies the BrainSafe Addictive Interface Assessment Framework to Snapchat, dimension by dimension, and explains why a bilateral, irreversible, public daily obligation counter aimed at adolescents is one of the most concerning design patterns in mainstream consumer technology.
We walk through the assessment, score the platform at 26 out of 30 — Critical, with all four automatic Red Flags triggered — and translate that finding into the "What If" Test: a café that tears up your loyalty card if you miss a day, and your friend's card too. The episode closes with five concrete things parents can do today, from having the Streak conversation to setting Snap Map to Ghost Mode. Read more at https://brainsafestandard.co.uk/, and dimension-by-dimension breakdowns are on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/brainsafestandard/.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Dopamine Slot Machine' Podcast
00:00:11
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening. Whenever you are, welcome to the Dopamine Slot Machine, the podcast that discusses what you need to know about the technology your children are using. How is it designed to get your kids hooked? How does it make money from your children? And what can you do to make sure that your child's relationship with tech is a positive
Introduction of Guest Andrew and Episode Focus
00:00:26
Andrew Wilmot
one?
00:00:26
Andrew Wilmot
My name is Andrew. I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer. And today we're taking a long, careful look at Snapchat. If you caught the previous episode where I ran TikTok through the BrainSafe framework, I'd recommend going back to listen to that if you haven't.
00:00:39
Andrew Wilmot
You'll know how this format works. Oh, I have a cat on here. One second. There you go. I might leave that in, you know, why not? ah Yeah, you'll know how this format works.
00:00:50
Andrew Wilmot
Today, we're doing the same thing for Snapchat. So going through dimension by dimension, one to five, going through a cumulative score, checking for red flags, the same methodology that we'd apply for a paying client or one of the members of our pilot program.
Framework for Analyzing Addictive Potential
00:01:03
Andrew Wilmot
By the the episode, you'll know exactly what the framework finds when it's pointed at Snapchat. So quick reminder if you missed the actual episode discussing the framework, the Brain Safe Addictive Interface Assessment Framework, the BAIAF for short, doesn't feel very short, scores digital products across six dimensions of addictive potential.
00:01:23
Andrew Wilmot
Autonomy, variable reward, friction asymmetry, temporal boundary erosion, social obligation engineering, and vulnerability amplification. Each dimension is scored one to five.
00:01:33
Andrew Wilmot
Add them together. If you finish with 6 to 12, then you've got low compulsivity potential, 13 to 18 moderate, 19 to 25 to 30 is critical.
00:01:45
Andrew Wilmot
We separately have a red flag check, so four specific combinations that trigger automatically, regardless of cumulative score. so Why have we doing Snapchat next?
Snapchat's Unique Social Mechanics and Youth Appeal
00:01:56
Andrew Wilmot
So three reasons want to put Snapchat under the microscope next.
00:02:00
Andrew Wilmot
First is the scale among children. I mean, it's basically the the default messaging application for children. There's over 930 million monthly active users worldwide. Its user base is concentrated amongst kids and young people.
00:02:14
Andrew Wilmot
So the demographic that this podcast cares about most, you that age 13 to 24, The most recent Ofcom data has Snapchat as one of the most used apps among UK 11 to 17 year olds.
00:02:27
Andrew Wilmot
And if you have a teenager in the UK, they are probably using Snapchat. This isn't some niche app. We're here. Second is the distinctive mechanics. So TikTok, as we covered last time, is an algorithm driven product.
00:02:40
Andrew Wilmot
The thing that keeps you there is the For You page. But Snapchat is structurally quite different. As we'll see, its compulsion architecture is built on engineered social obligation, streaks, friendship rankings, read receipts, location sharing.
00:02:53
Andrew Wilmot
These aren't algorithmic recommendations, but they are deliberate design choices that manufacture interpersonal pressure between users. If TikTok is the cleanest case study of variable reward applied at scale, Snapchat is the cleanest case study of social obligation engineering. I mean, how you go read the academic papers on this, Snapchat is the example they keep using.
00:03:16
Andrew Wilmot
The framework was built in part with Snapchat in mind. And Snapchat does appear in our published work assessments, the Brain Safe white paper, which is available on our website, scores Snapchat formally, and walks through the methodology.
00:03:28
Andrew Wilmot
So I'm not making this up as I go. The numbers be giving today are the same numbers that appear in the published framework elsewhere. Just a little bit more colour added to them. So let's go into it.
Features of Snapchat Engaging Youth
00:03:38
Andrew Wilmot
um I was actually just going to go straight into it.
00:03:42
Andrew Wilmot
But some of you might not have used Snapchat. Maybe the majority of you haven't used Snapchat. Some of you are probably daily Snapchat users. So just to cover from the top, Snapchat is a messaging and social platform built around the idea of ephemeral content, that being photos and videos that disappear after viewing.
00:04:02
Andrew Wilmot
So you've got the camera, which is the default screen when you open the app, the chat interface where you message friends, stories, which are 24-hour expiry posts visible to your friends, It does actually have an algorithmic short video feed spotlight, which is, the main focus isn't on that, but it is still there and it's important to cover.
00:04:23
Andrew Wilmot
SnapMap, which shows your location to your friends on a literal map. Some hefty safeguarding concerns there, but that's not what we're going to go into today. And Discover, which is publisher and creator content selected by Snapchat's algorithm.
00:04:36
Andrew Wilmot
Then there's social mechanics with it. Streaks, where two your users have to exchange snaps every 24 hours or counter resets to zero. Snap score, which is a like score gamification of your overall activity. Best friends and planets, a system that ranks your friendships by interaction frequency.
00:04:55
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah, certainly no concern for kids there. um Read receipts and typing indicators which are on by default. And though by the way, we're all used to read receipts and typing indicators, but those aren't neutral design choices and we'll cover that more shortly.
00:05:09
Andrew Wilmot
And there's things like Bitmoji, avatars that represent each user, that kind of thing. So Snapchat is doing loads of things at once. And we're going to try and look at all of it. It's quite a big task.
00:05:23
Andrew Wilmot
Ultimately, we're trying to figure out what is the engagement architecture that Snapchat is asking children to live
Snapchat's Design and User Engagement
00:05:29
Andrew Wilmot
inside. So from the top autonomy analysis, can the user make free informed decisions about their engagement with Snapchat?
00:05:37
Andrew Wilmot
ah Short answer, no. So, you know, things like Spotlight and Discover feeds use algorithmic content ranking and the optimization objective is not disclosed. There's no chronological option, no way to see why a particular piece of content is being shown to you. You can't actively choose what type of content you are shown.
00:05:57
Andrew Wilmot
The decision architecture inside the app will always favor more, more, more of your time, attention and engagement. The onboarding flow asks you to enable location sharing, it syncs your contacts and turn on every notification category. In each step, the affirmative option is prominent and the decline option is subtle. So it's it's really trying to lead you into the options that will engage you the most.
00:06:23
Andrew Wilmot
Notification develops are set to maximum. Reducing them requires navigating your way through settings, then notifications and toggling each category. Account deletion is technically possible, but has, again, similar to TikTok, a calling-off period during which any login reactivates the account.
00:06:40
Andrew Wilmot
That's also, by the way, a a friction asymmetry, favouring the platform's interest over the users, because there's no 30-day calling-off period when you start an account. But the deepest autonomy concern isn't really about settings or feeds. It's the streak mechanic. And so much of what I'm going to be talking about in this episode is that streak mechanic, because it is the core of why Snapchat is so addictive.
00:07:04
Andrew Wilmot
Sometimes I shy away from the word addictive in these, because the the medical debate is still ongoing. However... Having read the studies about what secession of Snapchat does to the short-term mental health of a user, that is, triggering anxiety, triggering panic about losing streaks and such, I think addiction is the most appropriate term here.
00:07:30
Andrew Wilmot
Anyway. So, with streaks, it is a type of social obligation engineering. And we'll talk about it more there. But it's a type of social obligation engineering that users will not be able to understand, particularly young users.
00:07:46
Andrew Wilmot
A child with a 400-day streak with their friend is not in any meaningful sense freely choosing each day to maintain it. They're acting to prevent a loss. That is choice architecture. It's choice architecture that has been engineered to make disengagement feel like a betrayal of your friends.
00:08:05
Andrew Wilmot
So scoring this a four rather than a five, and the reason is that the product does offer things like family center for parents and, know, core messaging is something that you choose to engage in.
00:08:19
Andrew Wilmot
There are pockets of autonomy preserved, but the cumulative effect is very
Variable Rewards and Compulsive Rechecking on Snapchat
00:08:23
Andrew Wilmot
opaque. It's very biased towards high engagement defaults, and users aren't going to meaningfully understand what it is they're engaging with.
00:08:33
Andrew Wilmot
So dimension two, variable reward profiling, the slot machine dimension. Does the product engineer unpredictability to sustain engagement? So Snapchat has several variable reward systems operating simultaneously.
00:08:48
Andrew Wilmot
And what's distinctive about this is how social that variability is. So you've got the spotlight feed, which is variable ratio, infinite scroll, same structural pattern as TikToks for you page, although less aggressively personalized. And it's not the default surface of the app. It's not it's not really what you were logging into Snapchat to do. It's not why you installed Snapchat. Well, probably is for some users, right? But it's not the core of the app the same way that TikToks for you page is.
00:09:13
Andrew Wilmot
The variable reward at the heart of Snapchat is about people, not content. When you open the app, you don't know which friends have posted their stories. You don't know who has snapped you. You don't know whether anyone has viewed your last story. You don't know whether your snap score has moved.
00:09:28
Andrew Wilmot
You don't know whether your position in someone's best friend list has shifted. And every check carries a small bundle of uncertainty about your social standing. And that uncertainty is what drives the compulsive rechecking.
00:09:39
Andrew Wilmot
You've got snap score, which is itself a gamified variable, increasing a score for various actions, sending snaps, receiving snaps, posting stories. The exact waiting isn't disclosed. And that also ties in with the lack of autonomy users have in Snapchat.
00:09:53
Andrew Wilmot
So the number but move the number moves in ways the user can't fully predict.
00:09:57
Andrew Wilmot
Structurally, same engagement engine as a slot machine credit counter ticking up by amounts you didn't expect. You've planet system, visible to Snapchat Plus subscribers, but with effects across the wider best friends hierarchy, which gamifies your position in another person's friendship circle. You can be promoted or demoted without warning.
00:10:17
Andrew Wilmot
That's a really intense form of variable social reward because it ties your sense of your own relationships with other people to a numerical ranking that the platform controls. If Spotlight, the infinite scroll video part of it,
00:10:33
Andrew Wilmot
Was the dominant part of Snapchat and the personalisation was as aggressive as TikTok. This would score five, no question. ah For now, I'm scoring four. Spotlight is one feature among many. And the core compulsion driver here is social rather than algorithmic.
00:10:47
Andrew Wilmot
It's still certainly high severity. That's unambiguous, but there's it could be worse. Probably not much worse, but it could be worse.
Challenges of Disengagement from Snapchat
00:10:55
Andrew Wilmot
Friction asymmetry. Is it harder to leave than to arrive?
00:10:59
Andrew Wilmot
Engaging is effortless. Opening Snapchat takes you straight to the camera, ready to... Take a photo. One tap to take a snap, one tap to send, one tap to access chat or stories. The whole interface is designed to minimize the time between the impulse to open the app and being inside its engagement loop to the point where it's trying to get you to open the app without even realizing you're opening the app and start engaging in its systems before you've ever made a conscious choice to do so.
00:11:25
Andrew Wilmot
De-escalation is harder, but that asymmetry isn't uniformed. And it's really targeted at specific behaviors that the platform wants to prevent. Reducing notification frequency requires navigating to settings, then notifications, and toggling all those categories. um And presents such a pathway to that because if you reduce notification frequency, then it's giving you fewer reminders to log in and start using the app again.
00:11:53
Andrew Wilmot
Disabling SnapMap location show requires finding and enabling ghost mode. And there's a sort of social cost in there that you'll be a ghost to your friends. and That's itself a piece of friction.
00:12:05
Andrew Wilmot
a Account deletion. 30-day waiting period. No equivalent waiting period for signing up. None of these are unique to Snapchat. Most major platforms make things much harder to stop using than ah to start using.
00:12:19
Andrew Wilmot
But this cumulative effect is meaningful here. Where Snapchat is unusual is in the friction is built around reducing streak engagement. There's no pause for a streak.
00:12:30
Andrew Wilmot
If your parents say you're going to have a Snapchat break, you're to have a phone break because you've you've not been engaged not been following the rules your parents have sent, then you are going to lose those streaks. And if that's a streak with hundreds or thousands of days, there's quite a lot of social investment in that. And it vanishes for both users simultaneously. so It can feel like your friends are being punished because you've not been allowed your phone.
00:12:56
Andrew Wilmot
I'm sure that's an argument that many parents are familiar with. it's a It's a really weird combination of roach motel design pattern with that social obligation engineering. It is it is horrible.
00:13:09
Andrew Wilmot
um However, you can start to disengage and you can reduce frequency. So again, I'm scoring this a four. It could be worse, not a lot worse, but it could be.
Erosion of Stopping Cues in Snapchat
00:13:20
Andrew Wilmot
Temporal boundary erosion. Does the product remove natural stopping cues? So, yeah, it's spotlight as an infinite scroll. That's an easy, easy mark against it. There's no pagination, no end point. Stories. When you're scrolling through stories, they auto advance from one friend's story to the next with no pause between them.
00:13:39
Andrew Wilmot
The natural point of finishing. The actual exit point for watching stories is when you've run out of stories. And if you're following a thousand people, that could be never. That could effectively just be another form of infinite content.
00:13:51
Andrew Wilmot
So similar to what we saw with TikTok. But Snapchat does something really unique here. And that is, I say unique, by the way, other platforms are integrating this. But the 24-hour expiry on stories creates a manufactured time pressure.
00:14:08
Andrew Wilmot
And that operates differently to infinite scroll. So rather than removing stopping queues within a session, the 24-hour expiry compresses the window in which content can be consumed. If your friend posted a story this morning and you don't check before tomorrow morning, it's gone forever. There's no archive, there's no catch-up later, the clock is always running on something.
00:14:29
Andrew Wilmot
That's quite up That level of FOMO is... it's That's got to be a lot for a kid. I remember speaking to a head teacher who was talking about how they had this child one the classes who was consistently late, otherwise a really good student, and their parents weren't letting them have their phones in our room, and it turned out that it was every morning they were late because...
00:14:54
Andrew Wilmot
They just felt like they needed to catch up on all of the messages and not just Snapchat, all of their messaging platforms from the night before. and there'd be hundreds and hundreds of notifications, hundreds of things to catch up on. And if you don't catch up on it, you lose it. You miss out.
00:15:08
Andrew Wilmot
It's gone forever. Your friend asks you why you didn't watch my story. have i that There's, again, a social obligation and element to this. The streak timer. It's a re-engagement mechanism timed to the same 24-hour cycle, and it pulls users back to the app at specific intervals, whether or not they actually want to, if they've got any whether or not they've got any organic desire to engage.
00:15:29
Andrew Wilmot
A child who sees the hourglass on a streak isn't responding to a notification about something interesting that's happened, they're responding to that countdown. So Snapchat becomes hard to put down within a session. It pulls you back across sessions multiple times a day at platform-determined intervals. Not user-determined intervals, platform-determined intervals.
00:15:50
Andrew Wilmot
So again, scoring this a four, there are things it could be doing worse here, but not by much. Again, these last few that I've scored four, it's a really strong argument that they should be fives, right?
00:16:03
Andrew Wilmot
Ultimately, i've I've chosen to be slightly cautious here. And when we get to the conclusion, you'll see why. Social obligation engineering.
Social Obligations Created by Snapchat
00:16:11
Andrew Wilmot
Five. Do we really need to go over the why here? Have we not talked? and The whole app is just social obligation engineering. Its whole monetization system is social obligation engineering. Snapchat is entirely designed to create fake social obligations, fake social pressures.
00:16:30
Andrew Wilmot
That's it. That's the only thing Snapchat actually offers you.
00:16:34
Andrew Wilmot
That is the only reason the app exists. Okay, I will go into it a bit more. I got a bit angry there. I just hate this kind of design and the way it's targeted at kids.
00:16:46
Andrew Wilmot
I really do. I'm I'm not going to exchange... Sorry, I'm not going to explain snaps and streaks again. You know how they work. However, that's social obligation engineering.
00:16:58
Andrew Wilmot
I really want to go back to it because ah if either of you misses 24-hour window for any reason, one of you gets hit by a bus, one of you's sick, one of you has your phone stolen, the number resets to zero for both of you, visibly.
00:17:15
Andrew Wilmot
And if that's a number that's in the thousands and you guys have maintained for a long while, then that's going to be genuinely upsetting for both parties. It's easy to imagine a scenario where one friend... and Child and teenage friendships are so tumultuous anyway, it's really easy to imagine scenario where that is friendship ending.
00:17:36
Andrew Wilmot
And all of these are ah bilateral, right? So most engagement mechanisms operate on one person at a time. It's operating on your watching, your scrolling, your scoring. But a streak is shared.
00:17:48
Andrew Wilmot
One person's failure to engage costs the other. It makes an interpersonal guilt problem. You're not just letting Snapchat down, you're letting your friend down. And it's irreversible. You cannot get that back.
00:18:00
Andrew Wilmot
Whatever the size of the number, when it resets, that's it The investment is lost. And there's this huge asymmetry between the slow accumulation and the instantaneous destruction. So it's loss aversion.
00:18:12
Andrew Wilmot
It's loss aversion engineered at scale. And it's public. So other users can see the size of your streaks. The number is part of how friendships are presented inside the app. And so maintaining a large streak with somebody is also a signal to other people of your closeness with that person.
00:18:31
Andrew Wilmot
And it's universal. It operates between best friends and distant acquaintances. hear about kids maintaining streaks with people they barely speak to anymore, people they don't even really like, because the cost of letting the number reset to zero feels disproportionate to the relationship.
00:18:48
Andrew Wilmot
You'll see photographs of ceilings of bags. By the way, I've used Snapchat. I've been a teenager on Snapchat. It was not the main messaging platform when I was at uni, but it was certainly one of the main ones. So I've done this.
00:19:01
Andrew Wilmot
You see people taking photos of nonsense just to maintain a streak with each other. Ceilings, bags, curtains, and to no pur for no reason other than to keep counter alive.
00:19:15
Andrew Wilmot
There's no real world equivalent of this. Friends do not, in the absence of an app, mark each other's diaries with a daily contact requirement and a public penalty for failing to keep in touch.
00:19:26
Andrew Wilmot
Over the past, Snapchat's been about 15 years now, it's taught hundreds of millions of children that friendship is a metric that you can fail. Beyond the streaks, there's further social obligations, so read receipts on by default. Your friends can see exactly when you opened their snap, which then creates pressure to respond.
00:19:46
Andrew Wilmot
Typing indicators show that someone's composing a reply, which creates pressure to sit and wait for that reply. It stops messaging being asynchronous. Snap map, broadcast geocation and activity status, which means disengaging the platform is socially visible.
00:20:01
Andrew Wilmot
Your friends can see when you're online, see where you are, see where you've moved. And got ranking friendships through a gamified system. I don't mean to but don't mean to be a cliche here, but that's just so Black Mirror, right?
00:20:19
Andrew Wilmot
The net effect of all of this is that leaving Snapchat doesn't just have an impact on you, but has an impact on all of your friends. That is the most evil, most perfect form of social obligation engineering that you can come up with.
00:20:37
Andrew Wilmot
I scored a five. And then vulnerability amplification. Are these mechanisms being deployed on populations who are particularly susceptible? Five.
00:20:48
Andrew Wilmot
Five. noke No notes needed. They're doing all of this to kids. They're doing all of this to teenagers.
Exploitation of Adolescents' Sensitivity on Snapchat
00:20:55
Andrew Wilmot
right. So research consistently shows that an adolescent's reward circuitry, like the brain's response to... signals like likes, friendship rankings, peer attention is much much more intense than it is in an adult and so all of these features are going to be hitting kids far harder than they would adults.
00:21:19
Andrew Wilmot
Now that bilateral nature of a lot of these mechanics specifically exploits of vulnerability in early to mid adolescence and that's that heightened sensitivity to peer rejection and social exclusion If i if somebody doesn't like me, and if it had has been known to happen sometimes, it might annoy me.
00:21:43
Andrew Wilmot
Particularly feel that it's unwarranted. but I'm not going to be upset or losing sleep about it. Life's too short. Pissed off too many people over the years for various things. Some fair, some not fair.
00:21:55
Andrew Wilmot
But when you're 12 or 13, that can feel like the end of the world. And so by making these bilateral, it is disproportionately harmful to its youngest users, not to mention the fact that most of its users are young.
00:22:09
Andrew Wilmot
You're not finding 50-year-olds Snapchatting each other. i mean, there might be some, but there's a as a portion of their users, it's negligible. There are no real self self-regulation tools here. There's no session time and no usage limit. No way that a user or parent can pause streaks.
00:22:29
Andrew Wilmot
There's no mitigation for any of this. I'm scoring at a five. The combination of adolescent core demographic, vulnerability targeted social mechanics and the absence of any sort of age differentiated design
00:22:43
Andrew Wilmot
David Wright- Maybe, we need to do a spinal tap and introduce a score of six just for Snapchat here. David Wright- It is as bad as it gets. David Wright- So we'll talk this up autonomy scores a four variable wards scores a four again friction asymmetry for temporal boundary erosion for again.
00:23:05
Andrew Wilmot
And then social obligation engineering, five. Vulnerability amplification, five.
Snapchat's Addictive Potential Score and Risks
00:23:09
Andrew Wilmot
So for cumulative score of 26 out of 30, which is, gets a severity rating of critical.
00:23:17
Andrew Wilmot
For context, the worked assessments score Snapchat at this level as well. TikTok scored 28. Snapchat sits just below it, but in the same band. Both are critical.
00:23:28
Andrew Wilmot
Neither are brain safe. Don't give these to your kids.
00:23:31
Andrew Wilmot
They are... And that, by the way, the the framework is designed that um that is within the variability that you're supposed to, that you could get between assessors. And now I've been the consistent assessor for both of these, but a different assessor might score TikTok slightly higher than either. The point is, it is so high that it's just completely inappropriate.
00:23:52
Andrew Wilmot
I think it's inappropriate for adults. I don't think adults should be using Snapchat. I don't think that adults should inflict that kind of design on themselves. let's talk about the red flag review which as a reminder are things that would cause it to fail and an assessment regardless of other scores so any one single dimension at maximum severity yep there's two of them social obligation engineering and vulnerability amplification red flag two the roach motel so having high autonomy and friction uh asymmetry yep it's got four on both of these the gambling mirror
00:24:29
Andrew Wilmot
Does it have variable rewards and is being applied on a vulnerable demographic? Yep, that's triggered too. And then open-ended erosion.
00:24:40
Andrew Wilmot
Does it have a high temporal boundary erosion score? And yeah, it does. So it's triggered all four of the red flags. um I think I would really struggle to find any way to introduce mitigations for this because the core design is around social obligation engineering. It is around making you feel guilty for not using it.
00:25:00
Andrew Wilmot
like It's about making you feel bad. Snapchat is designed to make you feel awful.
00:25:06
Andrew Wilmot
yeah I'll put together a little what-if test here. And this is going to sound ridiculous, but it just goes to show just how ridiculous Snapchat is as a platform. So taking a digital design pattern, stripping away the digital context and reimagining it in the real world.
00:25:23
Andrew Wilmot
Imagine a cafe. You go in every morning and the cafe gives you a loyalty card. Each time you visit, they stamp it. and The card grows in value. Not because you've accumulated points, but because of the streak.
00:25:34
Andrew Wilmot
So if you stop visiting for a day, ah the card just gets removed. not allowed it. um If you miss a single day, illness, forgetting, whatever. The cafe takes the card from you and tears it up in front of you. The barista announces it to the room. Everybody sees But gets worse because you have a regular morning companion at this cafe. you like let's say Let's say it's your mum.
00:26:00
Andrew Wilmot
You go for coffee with your mum every morning at this cafe. If you stop going, then their card gets ripped up too. When the cafe tears up your card, they tear up your mum's card too and tell everybody at the cafe that it was your fault.
00:26:18
Andrew Wilmot
Now, imagine this cafe did that to children. The cards tearing up ritual, the public shaming... the friends card being destroyed in front of them, all being framed as the child's responsibility, all targeted at 11-year-olds.
00:26:35
Andrew Wilmot
I don't think that we would allow this cafe to run. They'd call it coercive. They would object to it. they would There would be protests. But it happens inside of an app instead of a cafe.
00:26:47
Andrew Wilmot
It's the same structural properties here. It doesn't change just because it's in an app. The streak is the loyalty card. The streak reset is the tearing up ritual or and the bilateral penalty is the friend's cart being destroyed.
00:27:00
Andrew Wilmot
we can't We can't allow that in an app for for anybody, let alone kids.
00:27:06
Andrew Wilmot
So how would I fix Snapchat? Ugh. This is really difficult because I've come up with a few remediations, but I'm not sure that this would actually get it to be brain safe. But let's go through first. What could Snapchat do to be a healthier environment for its users?
00:27:24
Andrew Wilmot
Firstly, replace the binary streak mechanic with a cumulative one. Miss a day, who cares? Doesn't matter. you just It just ticks up every day that you do engage with it. Now, that's still gamified and there's still elements with it, but it...
00:27:39
Andrew Wilmot
massively removes reduces the social obligation engineering element of it. Second, built-in session timers. Not buried in a well-being dashboard somewhere.
00:27:49
Andrew Wilmot
Visible by default.
Parental Management of Snapchat's Influence
00:27:51
Andrew Wilmot
Speaking of default, having default notifications set to minimal, with refer affirmative opt-in for each additional notification being required.
00:28:02
Andrew Wilmot
Age differentiated design at the product level, not just monitoring. So if a user has not been verified as an adult, then it should not have best friend rankings. should not have SnapMap.
00:28:14
Andrew Wilmot
Why on earth are we letting our children announce to not just their friends, but strangers where they are at all times and being pressured to do so by Snapchat?
00:28:26
Andrew Wilmot
like that That should be just disabled, but that should be locked behind age verification anyway.
00:28:31
Andrew Wilmot
Single step account deletion. So making making deleting an account as difficult as well as easy as setting one up. And then finally making read receipts and ah typing notifications opt in rather than opt out. So you're not by default broadcasting your messaging behaviour to everybody.
00:28:53
Andrew Wilmot
I don't know if that would actually if we if snapchat implemented all of those get snapchat to a point where i would be happy my children using it let alone to a point where i'd be happy calling it brain safe fundamentally at its core snapchat is not a safe application but o what can you do if your child or teenager is using snapchat Let's talk about streaks, right?
00:29:19
Andrew Wilmot
Talk about how streaks are engineered and make sure your child understands that. Perhaps even implement your own. We are going to have a break from Snapchat at these regular intervals so that they can't accumulate streaks, right? And make it clear that the purpose is so you don't accumulate a streak.
00:29:40
Andrew Wilmot
The app loses a lot of its grip if it can't build streaks with your child. Set Snap Map to ghost mode. There's no reason for a teenager's precise location to be broadcast to their entire friends list, which will include people that aren't their friends at all times.
00:29:54
Andrew Wilmot
There's no good reason for it. Turn off all notifications. Very few notifications are actually needed. Maybe direct messages are defensible, but the best aren't.
00:30:07
Andrew Wilmot
Talk about the difference between friendships and metrics. So... Kids don't like being manipulated. Teenagers don't like being manipulated. he Teenagers don't even like being told to do by their parents. So I think a lot of teenagers are quite receptive to understanding the the way these platforms are trying to manipulate them. And they don't like it.
00:30:28
Andrew Wilmot
So show it to them. Now, longer term... we do need to talk government policy here so the uk consultation on social media closes in 10 days from the time recording the 26th of may respond to the consultation speak with your mp demand change so to summarize snapchat scored 26 out of 30 on the brain safe addictive interface assessment framework that places it in the critical severity band with all four automatic red flag conditions being triggered
00:31:01
Andrew Wilmot
It is not brain safe. That is a very decisive finding. It is primarily driven by the social obligation engineering. But if we, if if they somehow manage to get a one on that, everything else is still critical enough for Snapchat to not be brain safe. I just want to make that clear here. That's not the only dimension by which Snapchat is bad for its users, but it is the core one in which the app is built around.
00:31:27
Andrew Wilmot
That is the framework being applied honestly to Snapchat. Now, I do not like Snapchat. I think it is bad for children. i think it's harmful for children. I think Snapchat is responsible, as ah as a company, Snap Inc, is responsible for the deaths of children.
00:31:43
Andrew Wilmot
And I think that the senior executives of this company are, I don't know what I would say to them, But this framework has not been applied with a campaigning lens. I have to admit to my own bias here, and I think that's important to be aware of.
00:32:02
Andrew Wilmot
But I've done my best here to apply the framework honestly. Now, the fact that the framework then produces a result which is consistent with what I've been saying as a campaigner, what regulators, researchers, parent advocates have been saying about it for years,
00:32:17
Andrew Wilmot
is more reflective of how the app is built as opposed to some sort of inherent bias within myself. But maybe you disagree.
Host's Condemnation and Call for Listener Engagement
00:32:26
Andrew Wilmot
So we are publishing on LinkedIn dimension by dimension breakdowns of a number of different applications.
00:32:32
Andrew Wilmot
Search for Brainsafe on LinkedIn and follow us there. Now, we are still recruiting for our pilot program, but we are running out of spaces. We have had such amazing feedback from companies that have ah we've opened up conversations with.
00:32:46
Andrew Wilmot
along the lines of like, we wish we've been wanting something like this to exist for a while. If you didn't know, we are building fair trade for addictive design, product certification scheme so that parents or individuals who just care about their own digital wellbeing can make informed choices about the apps that they use.
00:33:11
Andrew Wilmot
But yeah, if you know a business that should be in our pilot, particularly anyone building children or family-focused digital products, put them in touch with me. I would love to speak with them. We've only got a couple of places left.
00:33:22
Andrew Wilmot
So don't hang about. Let's get you on board. But that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining. Don't forget that if you've got some questions for us or if you your children have been impacted by Snapchat in any way and you want to raise it with us, then get in touch on our website, thedopamineslotmachine.co.uk or brainsafestandard.co.uk if you're interested in learning more about the framework applied. This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine.
00:33:49
Andrew Wilmot
Thank you and see you soon.