Users can opt in to pay £3.99 per month for an ad-free experience to be rolled out by November.
A new TikTok feature allowing users to opt-in to an ad-free experience could exacerbate addictive behaviour, a psychologist and a researcher who specialises in social media has warned.
The service was launched last month. For a monthly fee of £3.99, users will be spared personalised ads, but they will still be served sponsored ads by creators and influencers on the app.
Alex Sharpe, a researcher on doomscrolling at the University of Chichester said research on the impact of a lack of ads is sparse, some theories suggest the ad-free feature could affect those with compulsive behaviour on social media.
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“Most people’s time post working hours is spent doom scrolling”
“The sunk cost effect, where having paid for something motivates greater use to justify the expense, is a well-established cognitive bias, though whether it meaningfully increases screen time hasn’t been studied directly,” Sharpe said.
Tanvi Sathe, a psychologist who has treated clients with social media compulsions, said she sees the feature targeting those who spend the most time on social media, including “doomscrollers” and content creators.
“Most people’s time post working hours is spent doom scrolling, and that has sort of become, I would say, like an escape thing they do to sort of get away from what they have to deal with at home,” Sathe said.“I do think the ad-free subscription would make it a lot worse.”
Sathe explained that ads can interrupt the dopamine loop created when scrolling through social media. They interrupt the reward the brain seeks when doomscrolling, making it easier to exit the app and seek a dopamine reward elsewhere.
“The sort of unpredictability of the ads popping up automatically breaks the rhythm of the continuous stimulation,” she said. “That interruption could reduce how a person is immersed within the act of doom scrolling.”
Sidhi Simpi, who produces content on women’s sports, said she would buy the subscription to help her find material on social media for her content.
But she said she does worry about the impact the feature could have on her scrolling behaviour.
“Ads kind of create a distraction, and make it difficult for me to keep my attention span,” she said.
TikTok users over the age of 18 will be notified of the feature and given the choice to opt-in to it whenever they open the app until November.
All photo credit: Namratha Prasad
