30 August 2026 by Mondo2.0

One more: the metamorphosis of the user in the age of infinite scrolling

A video lasts thirty seconds. The next one fifteen. Then a photograph, a comment, a news item. Another video. One more. Twenty minutes pass. Sometimes an hour, often two or three. Infinite scrolling, or endless scrolling, is the mechanism used by many digital platforms to continuously show new content as the user scrolls down the page.

There is no need to press “next”, change page or explicitly ask to see more. Once we reach the bottom of the screen, more content is already ready.

The flow, at least apparently, never ends. It is, indeed, “infinite”.

It is not merely a technical solution. It is a precise design and business choice. The interface eliminates interruptions and reduces to a minimum the actions needed to continue. A simple movement of the finger is enough to leave one piece of content and immediately receive another.

The experience is designed to be able to continue potentially forever.

And it is precisely this absence of an ending that represents a revolution.

A book ends. A newspaper has a last page. A film reaches the end credits. Even the Web of the early days periodically forced us to choose: click a link, change page, carry out a new search.

Each of these steps introduced a small interruption. A moment in which we could continue or stop.

With infinite scrolling, this moment tends to disappear.

We do not necessarily choose the next piece of content. It is already there.

There is also an economic element. As we scroll through photographs, videos and comments, we periodically encounter an advertisement. We continue and, after more content, we encounter another one.

For many free platforms, this mechanism is an integral part of the business model. Our continued presence creates opportunities for advertising exposure. The more we keep scrolling, the greater the opportunities to show us ads become.

It is one of the central aspects of what is called the attention economy.

The time spent by the user is not merely usage time. It is a resource that can be economically valorized.

Herbert Simon had already grasped the problem in 1971. In a society characterized by a growing abundance of information, the truly scarce resource becomes what that information consumes: our attention. Fifty years later, this insight seems to describe a smartphone feed perfectly.

The content available is practically infinite. Our attention and our time, however, remain finite. This creates continuous competition to capture them.

If we devote only a few seconds to each piece of content, whatever surprises, amuses or provokes has an immediate advantage. A nuanced position often requires time and context. An extreme sentence, a funny or provocative video, on the other hand, can be understood immediately by any target audience.

The same can happen in comments. We read many of them quickly. The more aggressive, ironic or polarized ones can attract our gaze more easily.

In an environment dominated by speed, what provokes an immediate reaction competes more effectively for our attention.

More than a century ago, Georg Simmel described the individual in the metropolis as being subjected to a rapid and continuous succession of stimuli. Simmel was writing in 1903. Naturally, he could not have imagined TikTok, Instagram or a smartphone.

But the parallel is suggestive. The incessant succession of stimuli of the early twentieth-century metropolis can today be enclosed in a screen we carry in our pocket. With one fundamental difference. The stimuli in the feed do not merely arrive. They are selected and ordered by systems that progressively learn which content succeeds in keeping us engaged.

Our perception of time can also vary. When we start scrolling, we do not know how long the experience will last. There is no final piece of content telling us that we have reached the end. There is no pause forcing us to ask ourselves whether we really want to continue.

And finally, there is an even simpler mechanism. Much of what we encounter may not interest us. We scroll. Another piece of content does not interest us. We scroll again.

Then something amusing arrives. Interesting. Surprising. The next one perhaps not.

But by now we know that, if we continue, sooner or later another one capable of capturing us might arrive.

It is a small promise that is renewed with every movement of the finger.

We do not necessarily continue because what we are looking at is interesting. We continue because the next piece of content might be.

If the next piece of content might be the best one, why stop? Why interrupt the experience and return to a reality that does not offer the same succession of stimuli? The next video might make us laugh more than the previous one, the next comment might outrage us more, the next image might surprise us. We do not know what will arrive, but we know that something will.

Perhaps this is where the metamorphosis of the user becomes most evident: we are no longer merely people who seek content, but people who may come to feel a constant need for it.

Infinite scrolling therefore is not only about how much time we spend in front of the screen.

The deepest transformation may occur when we begin to expect from reality itself the same rhythm, the same intensity and the same continuous promise of a new stimulus.

Mondoduepuntozero