Your brain on infinite scroll

Note · AI & the mind · 22 Mar 2026 · by Nathan Gupta, Cognitive Neuroscientist at AWA

We blame the feed on weak willpower. Really it is a system built by people who understand your attention better than you do.

It is tempting to frame compulsive scrolling as a personal failing: if you had more discipline, you would put the phone down. That framing is convenient for everyone except you, because it points the blame inward and leaves the machine untouched.

The feed is engineered. Variable rewards, the small unpredictable hit that keeps a slot-machine player seated, are deliberate. They are the product, and your attention is what the teams behind them optimise for, measured in the seconds they can keep you.

You are not weak. You are outnumbered.

Knowing this does not break the spell by itself, but it changes the task. Rather than trying to win a willpower contest against a system designed to beat it, you change the conditions: more friction between you and the feed, fewer reasons to open it, a few corners of the day it is not allowed into. You move the furniture rather than fighting the gravity.

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