How social media turned life into a game

Gaming essentially hinges on the central tenet of receiving a reward or feedback in return for completing a task. The rewards can come in a number of forms: points, money, badges, in-game mechanics etc. but they must be sufficient for the effort exerted in the task. Gamification succeeds because we are psychologically predisposed to seek feedback and rewards. This predates the technology that allowed gaming to succeed as an industry, but more importantly, it is becoming more prevalent in a society in which we are involved in an infinite feedback loop. Now that social media technology has arrived, it has lead not only to the extension of gaming techniques into new arenas, but into life itself.

When we read stories of Facebook/Twitter addiction, what we are essentially reading about is an addiction to your own life. It is a result of our psyche crashing together with social technologies in a platform that sets the scene for the gamification of life. The only problem of course, is that if we consider the fact that the reward must be sufficient for the effort, in social technologies, unlike games, this is no sure thing. While the designer of a game can decide both the challenge and the reward, when it comes to social media, there is no guaranteed reward.

And so we find ourselves trapped in this infinite loop where we constantly strive for the next big reward, in whatever form this may come: a Like, a comment, a new friend, content shared etc.. We get one fix and then we’re hooked. We strive for the next one and so the socialisation aspect of social media becomes a game. Only we’re playing with real life.

Who’s playing who?

As much as we are a subject of our own desire to receive a reward for our actions on social media, we are also at the mercy of those who are tapping into this psyche and encouraging more and more social actions. Brands are becoming immersed in the practice of gamification, recognising consumers’ needs and desires. So we see brands introducing games as a way to get to us on social platforms.

We are being encouraged to perform a social action like rating a product or liking a Facebook page in order to receive a reward, such as loyalty points or discounts. On the surface, this serves both parties well. The brand gets what they want: social interaction and exposure, and we get what we want : a nice reward sufficient for the action.

This is fine, provided that we remain in control of our game. What we are sometimes oblivious to is the fact that this game playing happens on a platform (i.e. Facebook) which is meant to be a representation of our lives. It becomes a little more complex when we consider this. The rewards we get compel us to keep ‘playing’ because it feeds into an innate human desire. But we need to be wary of what happens when we lose control, or become too susceptible to this desire. It’s no longer a case of switching the console off; the game keeps going on.

Changing Behaviour

Where it gets really interesting is when you consider the extent to which we change our behaviour to ‘win’ at the game. The more we play, the more we learn about which actions get which rewards. I know for example, that posting a photo or video on my profile is more likely to get a response than a simple update about what I did today. And I know that I need to interact with other people – commenting on their own content for example – to build up social capital that will hopefully result in my own reward of a comment back.

This may seem a pretty crude way to look at social interaction – that we carry it out for our own reward, but it would be naive to pretend this doesn’t apply on some level. Now of course as well as a visible reward of a comment, photo tag, share, we also get the less tangible ‘feel good’ reward. We just like it when people respond to us and notice us. From an early age we develop an understanding of how friendship works – be nice to people and they will generally be nice back.

Invite someone to your own party and you will generally get invited to theirs. And so we adapt our behaviour in order to get the best reward. And we know this because the study of behavior change goes back centuries, way before the advent of technology that allowed for gaming techniques to stimulate this behaviour change.

But when it comes to social media, we are very much still in that early learning stage. While as adults we approach the social platform with an understanding of how friendship and communities work, we still learning how to optimise that behaviour for the optimum reward. How often should we update our profile, when should we add someone as a friend, how many photos should we tag? These are all brand new questions that we face. Even the terminology is new and we have to develop our understanding of how these tasks work, to get the sufficient reward.

This is explored by BJ Fogg, when he applies his model of behaviour change to Facebook. The model rests on the idea of 3 elements converging at the same point to instigate change : Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. In his analysis, the trigger is provided by Facebook, for example in the form of an email notification when you’ve been tagged in a photo :

Who’s really winning?

If social media has turned life into a game, then the important question to ask is who’s really winning? While we may get the rewards, the real winner of course is Facebook. This huge game is being played on their platform, with us constantly returning to get that next fix that we’re learning to not live without. This is surely no more apparent than the fact that you will be hard pressed to find someone (outside of social media circles) that won’t in some way complain about Facebook and what a huge drag it is. Yet you’ll still find them on there, playing the game every day because they can’t escape the reward they get.

So Facebook is, expertly, winning. To the tune of $102 billion. Not a bad reward for the effort exerted.