The start: In 1969, Sesame Street aired its first broadcast, revolutionizing children’s television. It was designed to captivate kids, using innovative 3-5 minute segments that held their attention. Kids loved it.
In 1981, MTV debuted with shorter videos, flashier visuals, music, and a dose of rebellious energy. 2-3 minute music videos became the norm, full of lights, sounds, and scantily clad performers. Teens loved it.
In 2004, Facebook arrived, cementing the concept of the endless scroll: an infinite feed of posts designed to keep users continuously engaged. It was irresistible: a never-ending stream of posts, carefully crafted to keep users hooked. People loved it.
In 2016, TikTok emerged (formerly Musical.ly), blending short videos (as brief as 15 seconds), music, and an AI-powered feed that predicted your desires with eerie precision. It was the perfect endless scroll, and people loved it even more.
In 2024, 55 years later, today, YouTube has Shorts, Instagram has Reels, and even LinkedIn adopted short-form video content. The trend is clear: we’ve been conditioned to crave quick, dopamine-inducing content—instant, fleeting hits of pleasure. Just like drugs, without the biological agents.
Recently, a coalition of U.S. state attorneys general decided to take action. But is it too late?
What is addiction? It’s when something takes control, preventing you from doing what you genuinely want. It’s missing dinners, missing work, losing creativity, and feeling stuck.
TikTok and its cousins are addictive by design. Short, never-ending streams that tap into our most basic desire for novelty and reward. And the result of decades of this? A society less focused, less creative—a trend toward what I can only describe as digital zombification.
Many of us are victims of this. It’s real, and it’s here.
Interested? Let’s join forces. At MindLi, we’re trying to combat this—helping people break free from the endless scroll of meaningless content.
If you’re interested in joining the fight, let me know.
More:
- In the poetic irony of history, China is now doing to the West what the West once did to China during the Opium Wars. See “Why Did Britain Get China Addicted To Opium?” (Source: Absolute History; Video 59m)
- More about Sesame Street: The History of Sesame Street (Source: WatchMojo; video 4.35 m)
- Allow me also to Thank the late Prof. Gerry Lesson, a key advisor to Sesame Street, who was my Boss at Harvard