Platforms such as X, Instagram, and TikTok are sometimes compared to cigarettes. They are probably much worse, though.

These platforms depend on what are called “recommender systems,” which are like automated salespeople, predicting whether users will like a specific tweet, image, or video.  Like a good salesperson, a recommender system infers what a user will like based on what other users have liked in the past. For example, if I am a salesman, I might note that I recently sold Reebok sneakers to two customers with JanSport backpacks. So, if a customer comes into my store wearing a JanSpot backpack, I might point them to the Reebok sneakers.

A recommender system is a statistical tool designed to automate this process. It is like a regression, where the covariates are the user characteristics (the backpack), the outcome is whether or not they will buy a product (the sneakers), and the weights are estimated using data from other users (the other customers).  Regressions are powerful tools, and they can be used for good. For example, they can help us discover new artists, embrace new perspectives, or even prescribe the right medications (not all social media is bad).

However, a company that uses a regression to point an attention-mining “sales-platform” at a human brain makes a questionable decision from an ethical standpoint. With a human salesperson, we can resist the temptation to buy; with these algorithms, the match is more lopsided. The average salesperson has a few products in their repertoire; the platforms might have millions, updated continuously based on user feedback. A good salesperson might have seen a few thousand customers; an algorithm might have seen billions of users and trillions of actions. Finally, salespeople do not travel with us everywhere we go. Our devices are in our pockets; in addition to recommender-driven apps, they have emails from our bosses and calls from our Grandmothers, making their addictive hold all the more complex.

Given the power of recommender systems and the grip of our devices, apps like TikTok are worse than cigarettes. They are like cigarettes that become more addictive, almost instantly, anytime anyone—anywhere in the world—smokes.

It’s unclear how all of this will turn out. One thing is certain, though: the more these platforms are used, the more addictive they will become.