The One Little Feature That Changed the Internet (And Social Media)
For the worse…
You’ve done it. We all have.
We open your phone to check something quick and 45 minutes later we’re still there. Still scrolling. Still searching for that next thing that feels interesting enough to keep going.
We don’t even know what you’re looking for anymore.
We just… scroll.
It feels normal now. But it wasn’t always like this.
There was a time when the internet actually had an end. We’d reach the bottom of a page. You’d click Next if we really wanted more.
And often we didn’t.
Then one small design decision erased that boundary. Just a smoother way to load more stuff.
And that’s how everything changed.
When “Next Page” Meant Stop
The early web was full of edges.
Pages were finite. We had to make decisions: read more, click away, or close the laptop and call it a night.
That tiny act of clicking gave our brains a breather. It was effort, however small, that created natural stopping points.
When that friction disappeared, the web lost its rhythm.
We didn’t browse anymore, we flowed.
The feature that made it happen is called infinite scroll.
It first appeared in 2006, created by a UX designer named Aza Raskin. His goal was good: make browsing seamless. No loading delays, no page breaks, just continuous discovery.
But just like many other great inventions, they got used for all the wrong reasons.
The problem with something seamless is that it never tells you to stop.
The Scroll That Never Ends
Infinite scroll turned websites into bottomless pits of content. Not as important or game-changing for traditional web. But it was THE great change for social media apps.
Endless scrolling.
We could fall in at breakfast and look up hours later, with no memory of what we were even looking at.
Every swipe, every flick of the thumb delivered a fresh hit of maybe. Or FOMO.
Maybe the next post is better. Maybe the next video is the one.
It’s the same mechanic casinos use to keep people glued to slot machines. Random rewards. Unpredictable dopamine.
Scroll, tap, repeat.
What began as a clever UX feature has become one of the most powerful behavioral tools in the history of web.
We Don’t Read the Internet Anymore.
We feed on it.
When content was broken into pages, websites had to structure things like… well, books. Page by page.
We’d finish a page or an article, pause, then decide what’s next.
Infinite scroll obliterated that pacing.
Now we don’t finish things. We consume streams. Endlessly.
That’s why every major platform eventually became a feed. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok , each one rebuilt itself around endlessness.
We no longer navigate the internet. We react to it.
Every move we make tells the algorithm what to serve next. And every post we see is engineered to make sure we don’t stop. Unless they want us to stop. To look at an ad and eventually spend money.
The goal is no longer to show us what we want. It’s to make sure we never leave.
The YouTube Shift
YouTube used to feel like browsing a video store. Long ago.
You’d pick something, watch it, and done. Then came autoplay. Infinite scroll for video. And infinite scroll for your home page feed.
Now, before we even realize the first video ended, the next one starts. Or the next recommendation pops up on our home feed.
Finish that? The next one’s waiting.
It’s a perfect little trap. We’re not choosing anymore, we’re being guided through an algorithmic map.
Infinite scroll gave tech companies something priceless: continuous data.
Every flick, pause, and replay tells them what we’ll watch next. What we’ll buy next. Who we’ll become next. Or want to be.
Endless Business
Where magic meets the money.
Infinite scroll made the shift from page views to engagement time.
It’s nt about how many articles you click, it’s how long you stay in the feed.
Every extra minute means more ads, more impressions, more data points.
Humans are now measured in minutes online.
If you ever wondered why every platform looks the same, it’s because infinite scroll won.
Everything became an infinite feed. Even the “news.”
Discovery
You’re exploring the web, seeing new things. But it’s not exploration. It’s automation.
Our brains crave endings. Completion. Closure.
Infinite scroll removes them. There’s no “done,” just “more.” Maybe that explains the growing social media depression.
That lack of an endpoint messes with our sense of time. We stay longer because we’re chasing something that never arrives.
Streaming services use the same trick when they start the next episode before the credits roll.
Aza Raskin, the guy who built it, later said he regretted it.
Hundreds of millions of wasted hours of human attention is what he called it.
He said it’s like giving people “an infinite buffet” and wondering why they
The Bottom Line
Some apps are experimenting with limits again.
Maybe the next great UX innovation is about putting back friction. Not removing it.
Because a pause isn’t bad design.