"I'll pay money to get rid of social media"
American college students say they’d prefer social media didn’t exist, according to new research by the National Bureau of Economic Research
Users of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram just keep growing. It’s natural to think if a product is popular, it must be valuable. But new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) challenges this assumption, revealing that many users would actually prefer a world where these platforms didn’t exist at all.
A recent paper, When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media (Bursztyn et al., 2024), presents a striking paradox:
60% of TikTok users and 46% of Instagram users say they feel worse off because of these platforms.
57% and 58% of college students (users and non-users) prefer to live in a world without TikTok and Instagram, respectively.
Users would even pay money to see them disappear—$24 on average to eliminate TikTok and $6 to eliminate Instagram.
So why do people keep using a product they don’t want? The study suggests that social media’s popularity is not a reflection of user satisfaction, but rather of addictive and coercive design features that make quitting feel impossible.
A Product Market Trap
Rather than freely choosing to use TikTok or Instagram, many users feel forced into participation. The study describes this phenomenon as a "product market trap," a situation where people feel compelled to use a service not because it benefits them, but because opting out is worse.
Social media operates differently from traditional consumer markets, the authors argue, where dissatisfied customers can simply switch to a better product. Users worry that quitting means losing access to professional opportunities, social networks (fear-of-missing-out (FOMO), or real-time information, making departure feel impossible. This explains why users demanded to be paid to deactivate their accounts, yet also were ready to pay to get rid of them all together.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Quitting social media is not a personal decision—it’s a coordination problem.
If everyone quit, many people would be happier.
But if one person quits while others stay, they feel isolated and left out.
So, no one quits, even if most users secretly wish they could.
This dynamic mirrors other compulsive behaviours, from gambling to junk food consumption—where people struggle to stop despite knowing it’s not good for them. It also points to the challenges of social media users to, for example, switch from Twitter to Mastadon, due to the the absence of interoperability between platforms.
Addressing addiction
Bursztyn et al. (2024) suggest that social media should not be viewed as an ordinary consumer product, but as something more akin to a behavioural addiction. This recognition has fuelled growing calls for regulation to curb manipulative design practices.
The European Union’s Digital Fairness Act, proposes limits on manipulative design—banning dark patterns, addictive features like infinite scroll, and exploitative personalization that preys on user vulnerabilities.
Minors in the UK were protected from addictive features as a result of UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code. For example, YouTube now disables autoplay by default for users under 18, while TikTok has introduced screen time limits and push notification curfews for minors. These measures demonstrate that design choices can be changed when regulation mandates it. Voluntary measures to ‘tune for wellbeing’ have been adopted by some members of the Inspired Internet Pledge.
Decentralizing the ecosystem
The dissatisfaction with big social media platforms has fuelled efforts to decentralize the social media ecosystem. Renée DiResta, writing in Noema Magazine, argues that “the future is decentralized,” as once-dominant platforms lose control over user data, engagement, and discourse, fracturing into self-governing online communities.
The Free Our Feeds campaign is working to preserve the AT Protocol, the technology that powers Bluesky. The campaign seeks to establish a public-interest foundation to support the AT Protocol's independence, build independent infrastructure to ensure uninterrupted access to data streams, and fund developers to create a vibrant ecosystem of social applications built on open protocols resistant to private corporate takeover.
BuzzFeed promises no more SNARF
BuzzFeed’s recent manifesto criticizes AI algorithms for amplifying SNARF—Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, and Fear. It pledges that Buzzfeed, Huffpost, Tasty and Buzzfeed Studios will provide human curation of the best of the internet, balancing news, humour, and entertainment.
Research and initiatives like these remind us that while promoting digital detox or phone-free school days, the bigger question is not individual willpower but the architecture of these platforms, deliberately designed to override user agency.
An internet that fosters genuine connection instead of compulsive engagement can be built, if we prioritize human agency over algorithmic control, user well-being over ad-driven retention, and interoperability over walled gardens.
Lena Slachmuijlder Co-Chairs the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion.