Friction

This post was originally published on my blog.

Here’s a heuristic to measure the merit of an idea: if, after being told what it is, you start seeing it everywhere, chances are it’s a good one.

Friction, or, more concretely, frictionlessness, appears to be such an idea.

Like with most things worth discussing, it’s not a yes-or-no question. Friction is neither good nor bad on its own. It’s a matter of degree. Modern technology has made frictionlessness possible where it wasn’t before. I offer here my critique of this phenomenon, multiple examples that showcase it, and some thoughts on how to course correct.

Supply & Demand

The basic concept in economic price theory is the supply & demand curve. As the price goes down, supply and demand will converge. If the demand is very large, and the supply is essentially limitless, then price is a sort of friction. Raising the price prevents demand from overwhelming the system. For example, plastic bags used to be essentially free in Israel. You would grab as many as you liked in the supermarket. Then, a law instituted a (very small) price per bag. Use of bags dropped by 80% [1]. “Free” is not the same thing as “extremely cheap.”

The same is true for digital goods. Tech companies have focused on removing friction from their products. Sending a tweet is free. And there’s no practical limit to the possible number of tweets. The only thing stopping you from publishing more tweets is your own desire. Before I explain why this is not, in fact, an unquestionably good thing, let’s explore some other areas where friction has been all but eliminated.

Frictionless By Design

Below is a very partial list of behaviors that are virtually frictionless today, thanks in large part to technological innovations:

• Spending money with the 1-click Buy button on Amazon
• Watching more videos with YouTube’s “Up Next” feature
• Publishing content to most modern platforms (e.g. posting to Facebook)
• Writing with AutoCorrect
• Planning a trip abroad (by relying on e.g. TripAdvisor)
• Exploring local eats (Yelp)
• Being in a foreign city (Google Maps, Google Translate, etc.)
• Avoiding boredom (endless entertainment on the phone)
• Finding partners and mates (swiping on Tinder)
• Communication (texting)

All of these have benefits, but they also seem to have one or both of the following consequences:

1. Enablement and encouragement of impulsive, lazy, or otherwise harmful behavior.
2. Devaluation of things beneficial to us.

This isn’t strictly a digital-age phenomenon, by the way. A classic example is the credit card. You don’t “feel” the money flowing out when you swipe, the same way you would with a coin or a bill. Handing over 5 bills instead of one makes a difference; the swipe is always the same. The credit cards enables (and often encourages, with points) indiscriminate spending. It also devalues your money — at least in your eyes. People will pay up to twice the price for the convenience of using a card [3]. Why? Because a card has a lot less friction.

Now, let’s consider the two consequences in depth, and see how some of the other examples above mirror this pattern.

1. Enablement (or “Not Unless I’m Stoned”)

What would you say if someone asked you, “Want to spend the next 4 hours watching dumb videos on YouTube?”

“Not unless I’m stoned out of my mind,” you’d likely answer.

When stated explicitly, the tradeoff is obvious. But only rarely is the price of engaging with a frictionless platform obvious to you in the moment. The enablement mechanism is straightforward — when you remove friction from an experience, it becomes easier to engage in it, and so more of it occurs.

Consider an alternative universe without auto-play or recommended videos on YouTube. To find a clip, you had to have searched for it. I estimate an 80% drop in total minutes watched. Available numbers back this up: more than 70% of hours spent on YouTube are spent watching algorithm-recommended or autoplayed videos [2].

Charging 2 cents for a plastic bag discouraged people from using the marginally useful bags. Well, it turns out that 4 out of 5 bags were only marginally useful. I’d wager that the same is true for posts on Facebook, plays of Candy Crush, binges on Netflix, and so on. This means that introducing even the slightest amount of friction into the equation (e.g. pay one cent per post on FB) would drastically reduce use. Common digital wisdom says that removing a social media app from your phone pretty much kills the addiction to it. The added step of having to use the computer is just enough inconvenience to prevent people from using the platform altogether.

This bodes well for those interested in fighting digital addictions — tactically introduced friction can work wonders. See Digital Minimalism (book [4], essay [5]).

2. Devaluation (or “Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy”)

When you make something extremely affordable or free, you’re signaling that it’s not valuable. This is a basic market axiom. So, a very large supply of something (albums, mating partners, etc.) free will feel neither precious nor scarce. In this case, the price isn’t money; it’s time, effort, and attention. The lack of friction makes things “cheaper” in this regard, and the same marketplace dynamic applies.

For example, when you use Spotify, it’s a lot easier to give up on an album on the first try, and just pick another one. If you were to physically (or even digitally) buy it, the friction of discarding it would be much greater. Having fewer records would give each one a better chance to truly captivate you.

The same is true for a host of other products and experiences:

• Dating apps remove the friction from approaching potential mates. This causes their users to not put effort into pursuing any single one — they know there’s plenty of others out there.
• TripAdvisor removes the friction from traveling to a new city. Using it removes the need to explore the city, interact with the locals, or look up from your phone when walking around.
• Texting removes the friction from communication, to the point that calling someone is now considered bad taste. It gives you the illusion that maintaining a relationship is cheap and easy. It’s not.
• Udemy and Coursera remove the friction of going to college. But do you know any experts in a field who learned their craft online?
• Many apps remove the internal friction of feeling bored. This causes us to greatly devalue boredom, engage with it less, and atrophy our introspection and reflection muscles to our detriment.

Teddy Roosevelt said that anything worth having requires effort and difficulty (he also added pain, but that’s another topic ;)), and I tend to agree.

To conclude, my point is that friction can be valuable, and a frictionless experience can be a diminished one. My hypothesis is that friction is conducive to intention, introspection and reflection. That extra second of pause can be just enough to make you reconsider. Once you’re exposed to the idea of too little friction being detrimental to an experience, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

To quote Billie Eilish — just add some friction!

Huge thanks to Ellen Fishbein for collaborating on this piece.

[1] https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001189914
[2] https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-ces-2018-neal-mohan/
[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008196717017
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Minimalism-Choosing-Focused-Noisy/dp/0525536515
[5] https://medium.com/swlh/digital-minimalism-how-to-simplify-your-online-life-76b54838a877