Habit Formation and Its Significance in Social Media: A Review of Atomic Habits

From the most successful to the least fortunate, each person’s unique habits influence how they live their lives. A singular habit is harmless and does not have much of an impact on who we are, but an accumulation of habits defines and shapes who we are. It can either help facilitate success or impede productivity. In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear asserts that the key to self-improvement is not to focus on the goal but on the system that leads to the goal. The book illuminates the issue of work-life balance in today’s society. Small, simple steps can be taken daily to improve people’s mental health and well-being, leading to a better quality of life. Issues like addiction or mental health problems can be lessened if people follow these steps. Atomic Habits can be used in everyday life. It can be applied to running the operations of a business, from managing employees to bettering yourself as a leader. While this book delivers excellent insight into the psychology of habit formation, the author misses the opportunity to connect the relationship between social media and habit formation, which would have added to the book’s relevance in today’s society. However, this book delivers excellent insight into the different psychological aspects that influence our habits, and Clear is effective at making the content cogent and intuitive.

In Atomic Habits, Clear points out that the system is the most crucial aspect to focus on when starting or breaking a habit. Unlike goal setting, which focuses primarily on achieving or attaining, system management focuses on making a process or a set of processes as efficient as possible. Clear gives the example of the English bicycling team in the mid-2010s. The head coach, Dave Brailsford, focused on making each aspect of biking as efficient as possible. This includes redesigning the bike seat to make it more comfortable, wearing electrically heated shorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature, and changing bike suits to make them more aerodynamic. In isolation, these marginal gains improved performance by a small measure but, when aggregated, allowed this team to win the Tour de France 5 times in 6 years. Rather than focusing on winning a Tour de France, Brailsford focused on making his riders’ system as efficient as possible- not just improving a cyclist’s time but improving their overall approach towards riding. Clear discusses the idea of marginal gains. These gains incrementally bring a person closer to their goal, focusing on the incremental self-improvement of things one can control. This thought process is evident when considering successful athletes. All athletes want to achieve the same goal of winning a championship, but only a few do. What makes an athlete of similar ability and body type excel over their peers? It is the work ethic and commitment to self-improvement, or in other words, a commitment to their “systems.” Clear states, “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”

Clear structures Atomic Habits to mirror the 4-step neurological feedback loop called the “habit loop.” The “habit loop” was an idea based on the work of Edward Thorndike, a psychologist in the 1900s. Based on his experiments with cats and habit formations, he proposed that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unsatisfying consequences are less likely to be repeated (Clear). This is what Thorndike describes as the law of effect. The habit loop that Clear articulates is a 4 step process that begins with a cue and then activates craving, which creates a response and a reward. The cue triggers the brain to initiate a behavior. Craving is a motivational force behind each action. The response is the actual habit that is performed. Finally, the reward is the end goal of every habit, a dopamine release that satisfies our craving. Clear describes building habits through his four laws: make it obvious (cue), make it attractive (craving), make it easy (response), and make it satisfying (reward). The more we repeat a habit, the more ingrained and unconscious it becomes because of this feedback loop. For example, brushing our teeth is a habit we form growing up. When you are an adult, brushing your teeth before bed becomes an unconscious decision. This is because it is ingrained in us neurologically. The 4 step process is the foundation of any habit that is formed which was first described by the author Charles Duhigg in his book “The Power of Habit.”

Social media platforms can implement these habit formation tricks into their products. Although Clear quickly discusses this topic, he misses the opportunity to connect this issue to his book, which would have made the book’s message even more compelling. These platforms can use habit formation to increase consumer attention through algorithms. That is why in our current age, we see so many social media users “addicted” to their screens; it is a part of their habit. Social media use can be described as more of a habit than an addiction because users can experience benefits from using social media. It is the overindulgence in the apps that causes suffering. “Habits and the electronic herd: The psychology behind social media’s successes and failures,” a research article by Wendy Wood and Ian Anderson, claims “financial success of different social media sites is closely tied to the daily use habits they create among users.”(Wood and Anderson 83) This is evident in the rise of social media use and increased screen time among users. If social media companies use the same psychological tricks to form habits, they can tap into a large customer base and drastically increase revenue. For example, companies can reduce friction in the use of the app by making the interface as easy to use and accessible as possible, as well as making the app attractive and engaging with the users.

Clear argues that we form habits to let our conscious brain rest while we go on autopilot. As a result, habits become unconscious behaviors. He defines a habit as “a behavior that has been repeated enough times that it becomes automatic.” Picking the phone up and scrolling through social media when bored can be an unconscious response to suppressing boredom, but it could also be a conscious response. In my experience, I use social media consciously when I am not doing anything. However, at the same time, I can unconsciously get carried away by scrolling through my phone when I should be doing something productive. Habits can become unconscious when we repeatedly do them consciously. According to the research article “Making health habitual: the psychology of ‘habit-formation’ and general practice” by Benjamin Gardner and Phillippa Lally, contextual cues trigger our behavior (Gardner and Lally 664). An example is automatically washing hands after using the bathroom. The contextual cue is using the bathroom and the behavior triggered is washing hands. Similarly, once the behavior of looking at social media becomes ingrained, users will unconsciously use or stay on social media. Gardner and Lally assert, “once initiation of the action is ‘transferred’ to external cues, dependence on conscious attention or motivational processes is reduced.”(Gardner and Lally 664). Similar to what Clear states, the more we repeat a habit, the more unconscious that behavior is. Social media companies take advantage of this aspect of habit formation and use it to build habits in their users unconsciously. That is why many people may feel like they are spending too much time on social media but find it hard to quit. It is already implanted in their lifestyle.

One of James Clear’s claims is that motivation is overrated, and the environment often matters more. Motivation helps a person complete a task or action, but motivation varies and is inconsistent. Discipline is much more important to start or break a habit successfully. Clear explains that disciplined people do not have extraordinary power over those who are not, but instead, disciplined people spend less of their time in tempting situations. He talks about creating an environment where queues for a good habit are visible and queues for a bad habit are hidden. Since contextual cues trigger behavior, seeing a good cue will more likely lead a person to create a good habit. Vice versa, hiding a bad cue will prevent someone from being triggered into unwanted behavior. Social media companies create an environment through their platform where their users constantly see cues that keep them engaged on the app. In the research article “Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Attention” by Vikram Bhargava and Manuel Velasquez, they discuss how social media companies design their platforms so that they are intentionally addictive. “While the specific mechanism social media companies use in designing their platforms in ways that have rendered them addictive has changed over time, three of these design elements are common and worth pointing out: first, the use of intermittent variable rewards; second, design features that take advantage of our desire for social validation and social reciprocity; and third, platform designs that erode natural stopping cues.”(Bhargava 326). Without natural stopping cues, users will unconsciously be on the app for extended periods, like the endless scroll feature. Bhargava and Velasquez label this type of business model as an “attention-economy” business model whose primary goal is to keep users engaged on the platform. With a combination of both cues that trigger a user to use social media apps and cues that keep the user engaged, it makes sense that we are seeing a rise in social media addiction.

The fact that social media companies can knowingly take advantage of users’ habit formation poses an ethical threat to society. An article posted by USC entitled “No, you are not addicted to your digital device, but you may have a habit you want to break” by Ian Anderson and Wendy Wood discusses how platforms are designed around our habits. An example they give is the endless scroll design. Anderson and Wood state that the endless scroll effectively removes points that signal you to stop browsing. It also presents each post in a sequence, heightening the reward experience when finding a funny or engaging video. “Such intermittent rewards are especially effective at building habits.” As users build the habit of scrolling through social media, their external environment and cues also play a factor in strengthening their habit. For example, a user who scrolls through social media on the commute to work while on the bus is triggered to use social media when sitting down.

Social media companies and big tech firms want users to be as addicted and engulfed in their platforms as possible. For instance, Google is a company that makes money off its users. The longer a user is on the platform, the more money Google will make, either by showing the users advertisements or selling their digital information. This is why Google wants its users to spend as much time on its platform as possible. This business model is known as the “attention-economy” business model, in which social media companies gain revenue based on how long their users are engaged with their platform. They utilize some of the psychological tricks Clear talks about, such as making a platform’s environment attractive and engaging or using cues to prolong use on the platforms. Their goal is to make their platforms a part of your habits. However, if we know this, we can adjust our habits and benefit from apps and social media platforms. Anderson and Wood state at the end of their article, “By understanding habits, we all can stop worrying about digital detox and start reengineering apps and websites to meet our own needs as opposed to the sites’ needs — which is to build a habitual user base. And we can get on with ameliorating the real challenges of social media: misinformation, biased algorithms, and the disruptions they create.” Similar to what Clear states in the book, we can alter our habits to make them benefit us rather than impede our growth.

Specifically, we can use Clear’s habit-formation advice to break our addiction to social media. He says we can create new habits by making them “attractive” and associating them with positive emotions. For example, saving money can be reframed from having less money to spend on yourself to having more money to spend in the future. This method of rephrasing how we look at habits impacts our brain’s physiology. Conversely, we can make habits unattractive in order to break them. Perhaps we can rewire our brains to combat the temptations of social media through the four step neurological feedback loop described by James Clear in Atomic Habits. First, we should be aware that there is even a habit formed. This will bring the habit to our conscious brain rather than let it stay unconscious. We should make the app harder to use. Deleting the social media app will make the habit harder to continue and remove the cue associated with the habit. So every time you want to use it, you have to re-download it. If someone has the habit of scrolling through social media before they go to bed or when they wake up, charging the phone on a desk away from the bed removes the cue and makes it harder to do. To make the habit unsatisfying, we can reframe how we think about social media use. Setting a limit to our social media use is a conscious way of combating the addictive nature of the platform. By setting a goal that we want to achieve, i.e. less social media usage, it makes the habit less satisfying because we are going against our urge to stop the addiction.

Atomic Habits is a great self-help book that I highly recommend. Although I have a few critiques of the book, mainly the opportunity missed to discuss social media use and tech companies’ ability to take advantage of habit formation, Clear does a terrific job at articulating the steps needed to either form or break a habit in a cogent manner. The connection between Clear’s view on habit formation and the current epidemic of social media addiction is relevant in finding solutions to break the addiction. Although social media companies use the strategies on habit formation discussed by Clear, the users can also be empowered to use the same strategies to minimize social media usage. Overall, I believe Clear achieves his goal of creating a book that will help readers develop healthy habits and understand how to dismantle unhealthy ones.

Reference Page

Anderson, Ian, and Wendy Wood. “No, You Are Not Addicted to Your Digital Device, but You May Have a Habit You Want to Break > News > USC Dornsife.” USC Dornsife College News RSS, 2 Feb. 2021, https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3397/not-addicted-to-digital-device-but-ma-have-habit/.

Anderson, Ian A., and Wendy Wood. “Habits and the Electronic Herd: The Psychology Behind Social Media’s Successes and Failures.” Consumer Psychology Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 22 Nov. 2020, pp. 83–99., https://doi.org/10.1002/arcp.1063.

Bhargava, Vikram R., and Manuel Velasquez. “Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction.” Business Ethics Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3, 2021, pp. 321–59, https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2020.32.

Clear, James. Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. CELA, 2021.

Gardner, Benjamin, et al. “Making Health Habitual: The Psychology of ‘Habit-Formation’ and General Practice.” British Journal of General Practice, vol. 62, no. 605, 2012, pp. 664–666., https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp12x659466.

Wood, Wendy, and Dennis Rünger. “Psychology of Habit.” Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 67, no. 1, 2016, pp. 289–314, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417.