Why You Can’t Stop Scrolling: 5 Surprising Truths from Nir Eyal’s ‘Hooked’

Introduction

Seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners check their device within fifteen minutes of waking up. Industry insiders believe we check our phones up to 150 times a day. If you’ve ever found yourself mindlessly opening an app or scrolling through a feed without a conscious decision to do so, you’re not alone. This isn’t a personal failure; it’s the result of intentional, sophisticated design.

How do companies producing little more than bits of code on a screen seemingly control our minds? Nir Eyal’s book, “Hooked,” provides the blueprints for the psychological engineering behind the world’s most habit-forming products. This article distills the five most surprising and impactful takeaways from his “Hook Model” to reveal the mechanics of our digital compulsions.

1. They Start as Vitamins, Then Become Painkillers

A common question investors ask entrepreneurs is, “Are you building a vitamin or a painkiller?” Painkillers solve an obvious, urgent need, making them a seemingly safer bet. Vitamins are nice-to-haves; they don’t solve an obvious pain point, and we can go without them for a few days without issue.

The counter-intuitive twist revealed in “Hooked” is that many of today’s most indispensable technologies—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—started as “vitamins.” No one was waking up in the middle of the night screaming, “I need something to help me update my status!”

The key insight is that as we form a habit with a “vitamin,” it transforms into a “painkiller.” The “pain” it solves is the psychological discomfort—the itch—we feel when we are not using the product. Using the technology to scratch the itch provides faster satisfaction than ignoring it. Eyal’s book defines this transformation succinctly:

A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of pain.

This is a powerful mechanism. These products don’t just solve a problem we already have; they create a psychological need that only they can satisfy, making their use a default, automatic behavior.

2. The Real Hook is an Internal Trigger

When we think about what prompts us to use an app, we usually think of external cues. The source describes two types of triggers that initiate behavior:

• External Triggers: The obvious pings, notification bubbles, and app icons on our screen that explicitly tell us what to do next.
• Internal Triggers: The feelings, thoughts, and pre-existing routines that cue our behavior automatically, often without conscious thought.

The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to move beyond external prompts and attach itself to an internal trigger. Eyal explains that these triggers are often tied to negative emotions. When we feel a pang of loneliness and before rational thought occurs, we are scrolling through our Facebook feeds. When we feel a tad bored, we instantly open Twitter. When a question comes to mind, before searching our brains, we query Google. The product becomes the first-to-mind solution for a recurring emotional state. This is a far more powerful and persistent mechanism than simply sending notifications, as it means the impulse to use the product comes from within.

3. Action Is Easiest When It’s Simpler Than Thinking

To understand why we act, the book references Stanford professor B.J. Fogg’s Behavior Model: B = MAT (Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger). For any behavior to occur, a user must have sufficient motivation, the ability to perform the action, and a trigger to activate it. Imagine a time when your mobile phone rang but you didn’t answer it. Why not? Perhaps the phone was buried in a bag (not enough Ability), or you thought it was a telemarketer (not enough Motivation). Even with a trigger, a behavior fails if either motivation or ability is lacking.

While we often assume that increasing motivation is the key to driving user behavior, “Hooked” argues that the most effective and reliable method is to increase Ability—that is, to make the desired action radically simple. The easier an action is to perform, the more likely a person is to do it.

For example, creating online content once required setting up a domain and fiddling with web hosts. Blogging made it easier. Then Twitter reduced the action to just 140 characters. Pinterest and Instagram made it even simpler, requiring just a repin or a quick photo. This principle removes friction and reduces the cognitive effort required to act, making the behavior almost unconscious. As Blogger and Twitter cofounder Evan Williams describes his formula for innovation:

“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time . . . Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

4. Unpredictable Rewards Keep Us Coming Back

What distinguishes the Hook Model from a simple feedback loop is its use of variable rewards. Predictable feedback loops, like a refrigerator light turning on when you open the door, don’t create desire. But add variability—like a slot machine—and you create a craving.

The science behind this is that our dopamine systems are activated more by the anticipation of a reward than by the reward itself. Unpredictability supercharges this effect. As Eyal notes, variability “suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating the parts associated with wanting and desire.” This is the neurological basis for the loss of control we sometimes feel while scrolling.

The endless scroll of a social media feed is a perfect analogy for pulling the lever on a slot machine. You never know if the next post will be mundane or fascinating, and that hunt for the next great find is what keeps you scrolling. The source categorizes these rewards into three types:

• Rewards of the Tribe: The search for social validation, such as likes, comments, and upvotes, which makes us feel accepted and important.
• Rewards of the Hunt: The search for resources or information, like scrolling through a news feed or browsing Pinterest for the next interesting item.
• Rewards of the Self: The search for mastery, completion, and competency, like the satisfaction of clearing an email inbox or leveling up in a game.

5. The More You Invest, the Stickier It Gets

The final phase of the Hook Model is Investment, where the user puts something into the product—time, data, effort, or social capital. This isn’t about paying money; it’s about doing a bit of work that improves the service for the next go-around.

This principle leverages a cognitive bias the source calls the “IKEA Effect”: we irrationally overvalue things that we’ve put our own labor into. In technology, we value our curated collection of memories on Instagram, our ever-growing archive in Gmail, or the large following we’ve cultivated on Twitter.

This investment is more than just a final step; it’s a mechanism that supercharges the entire next cycle of the hook. Eyal explains these commitments are “leveraged to make the trigger more engaging, the action easier, and the reward more exciting with every pass through the Hook cycle.” This creates a self-perpetuating loop of increased engagement, which makes it incredibly difficult to leave established platforms. Switching means abandoning all the value we’ve personally invested.

Conclusion

The compulsive habits we form with technology are not accidental. They are the result of a deliberate, four-step psychological pattern whose ultimate goal is to create a “mind monopoly”—attaching a product to a user’s daily routines and emotions so deeply that competitors become cognitively expensive to consider.

Eyal argues this is a new superpower, but with it comes responsibility. The goal isn’t just manipulation; it’s about empowerment. As he puts it, innovators should “build products to help people do the things they already want to do but, for lack of a solution, don’t do.” Understood this way, the Hook Model becomes a tool for creating healthier, more productive, and more connected lives.

Now that you can see the blueprint, which products have you hooked, and why?