A campaign can say “your wellbeing matters” whilst, at the same time, sending constant notifications. It can invite people to participate freely whilst using urgency, rewards or social pressure to regain their attention. It can also talk about autonomy within an experience that offers hardly any natural moments to pause.
This is where the link between addictive design and public trust comes in. An organisation’s credibility depends on its messages, but also on the digital experience that accompanies them.
The term ‘addictive design’ is used to describe interface choices, recommendation systems and interaction mechanisms that seek to prolong, regain or intensify people’s attention.
The fact that a product is appealing or easy to use does not make it addictive, nor does frequent use constitute a diagnosis of addiction. The problem arises when the design makes it difficult for a person to control how long they stay, when they stop or why they return.
In February 2026, the European Commission reached a preliminary conclusion that TikTok’s addictive design could breach the Digital Services Act (DSA). The investigation highlighted features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, notifications and the highly personalised recommendation system. The Commission also questioned the effectiveness of control tools that are easy to dismiss. The proceedings are still ongoing, so these conclusions are not yet final. You can read the European Commission’s official communication on TikTok.
The Commission’s preliminary conclusion shifts the focus from individual self-control to the platform’s design. It is no longer enough to ask why a person does not log off. We must also look at how the experience that demands their attention is constructed.
For communications teams, this opens an uncomfortable but necessary conversation. Can a campaign be considered responsible if the message is well-crafted, but the interface is pressuring?
Addictive design brings together mechanisms that reduce breaks, prolong interaction, or encourage a person to return frequently.
Some features are easy to recognise:
None of these features, on its own, is enough to classify a platform or campaign as addictive. What matters is the combination of features, their frequency, the target audience, how easy they are to turn off, and their purpose.
A notification might serve as a reminder for a doctor’s appointment. It might also interrupt the user several times a day, creating a fear of missing out. The same tool can have different effects depending on its design and context.
Back in December 2023, the European Parliament called for new measures to tackle techniques such as infinite scrolling, autoplay and constant notifications. It also advocated for ethical digital products that do not rely on manipulative patterns or mechanisms designed to continuously capture attention. The report can be found in the European Parliament’s resolution on addictive design.
Furthermore, the protection of minors has accelerated this debate. In July 2025, the Commission published its guidelines on the protection of minors under the DSA, in which it recommends measures to reduce problematic and addictive behaviour, strengthen privacy and give children and teenagers more control over their accounts and content.
These guidelines are voluntary and following them does not automatically guarantee compliance. The Commission will, however, use them as a benchmark to assess whether platforms accessible to minors comply with Article 28(1) of the DSA.
Since 2024, the Commission has also been conducting proceedings against Meta to examine, amongst other issues, whether Facebook and Instagram’s systems and algorithms may encourage behavioural addictions in minors or create closed content loops. Official information is available in the DSA proceedings on the protection of minors on Facebook and Instagram. The concern, however, goes beyond regulatory compliance and also extends to the mental health, rights and wellbeing of minors.
UNESCO has recently broadened this discussion from an ethical and rights-based perspective. Its report Ethical considerations for youth mental health in the digital environment, published in 2026, warns that digital environments can encourage addictive patterns of use and affect the wellbeing of children and adolescents. It also points out that responsibility cannot rest solely with families or young people themselves: technology companies, governments and educational institutions also play a part in how these spaces are designed and what measures are taken to protect them.
Digital safety encompasses both the content and the architecture that determines how it is delivered, how long it lasts and what prompts us to do next. Assessing a platform requires examining both.
Addictive design and dark patterns often go hand in hand, but it is important to distinguish between them.
Dark patterns — also known as deceptive patterns — seek to influence a decision through confusing interfaces, unbalanced visual hierarchies or unnecessarily difficult navigation paths.
Among the most common dark patterns are ‘accept’ buttons that are much more prominent than ‘decline’ options, pre-ticked boxes, and cancellation processes that are deliberately more complex than registration processes. They also appear in messages that induce guilt when an option is rejected, warnings of artificial urgency, or repeated requests until the user eventually gives in out of exhaustion.
Addictive design works differently. Its main aim is usually to retain or regain attention. It does not always need to be deceptive. It may simply involve eliminating pauses, offering one reward after another, or using social cues to make it harder to opt out.
Both approaches can overlap. A notification may function as a legitimate reminder. But if it uses social pressure, misleading urgency or disproportionate frequency, it can also become a form of manipulation.
That is why an assessment based solely on technical features falls short. The important question is what capacity the individual retains to understand, decide and stop.
Communications teams often work with promises.
“Your privacy matters.”
“Get involved whenever you want.”
“You’re in control.”
“We want to hear from you.”
“This space is safe.”
These promises are put to the test throughout the digital journey. If opting out requires more steps than opting in, the message loses its impact. If a wellbeing campaign sends constant notifications, a contradiction arises. If an app aimed at young people rewards daily use, the safety claim begins to sound incomplete.
Trust is also built into the user experience. An interface that feels pushy can undermine a responsible message.
This particularly affects public institutions, NGOs, foundations, and organisations working on social causes, because their credibility largely depends on the consistency between what they stand for and the experience they offer.
From within the organisation, this inconsistency may seem secondary: the communications team may not have designed the platform, chosen the algorithm or controlled how a social media platform works. For the user, however, all these decisions form a single experience. They cannot easily distinguish what belongs to communications, the product, technology or the provider; they attribute the whole to the organisation.
A well-written text, a thoughtful campaign, or a well-drafted privacy policy loses its impact if the digital journey contradicts what it promises. Public trust also depends on users being able to say ‘no’, to stop whenever they wish, and to understand what data is being requested of them clearly. Other factors that influence this include the frequency of messages, the options enabled by default, the ease of the user journey and the metrics the organisation uses to define success.
A campaign loses coherence when it values keeping people inside the experience more than making that experience useful. It also loses coherence when it treats difficulty in leaving, cancelling or stopping as a sign of success.
A communications team does not need to become a technical department to identify risks. It can start with four simple questions.
Many digital products eliminate natural points of closure.
On a traditional webpage, the content ends. In an infinite feed, a new item always appears. Taking a break depends on the user making a conscious decision in the face of a system that continues to offer stimuli.
A responsible experience can introduce rest points, summaries, time reminders, clear endings and visible options to exit or continue later. All of this gives the user something essential back: the ability to decide when they want to stop.
Urgency can be legitimate. A health alert, a call to action with a deadline or an emergency all require swift action.
The problem arises when urgency is manufactured to generate clicks, sign-ups or repeat engagement. It also arises when guilt, anxiety, fear of missing out or peer pressure are used.
Phrases such as ‘everyone else has already taken part’, ‘you’re missing out’ or ‘don’t break your streak’ are not neutral. They trigger social and emotional responses that can outweigh the information itself.
A communications team should be able to explain why it is using that tactic and what effect it hopes to achieve.
Default settings matter.
If all notifications are enabled from the outset and disabling them requires navigating through several menus, control exists in theory but is weak in practice.
With minors, this issue is even more sensitive. European guidelines recommend protective default settings, greater control over recommendations, and measures to reduce exposure to harmful or repetitive content streams.
Responsible design does not force the user to protect themselves from an experience that the organisation itself has made difficult to control.
A campaign can achieve good engagement results whilst damaging its relationship with its audience.
Screen time, open notifications and repeat engagement may indicate activity. On their own, they do not demonstrate understanding, trust or usefulness.
It is worth supplementing standard metrics with assessments of whether the user understood the information, was able to complete the task without unnecessary friction, and knew what data they were sharing. It is also important to check whether they found the exit easily, considered the frequency of contact appropriate, and would return because of the experience’s usefulness, not because the design pushed them to do so.
Metrics also reveal which behaviours the organisation chooses to reward.
Many teams raise a reasonable objection: they work within platforms they do not control.
They cannot decide how TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or a third-party tool works. Nor do they control every element of an organisational app.
Even without controlling the entire platform, they do retain some room for manoeuvre.
A briefing can ask for more than reach, engagement or dwell time.
It may also include:
When these elements are not included in the briefing, they tend to be brought up late in the discussion.
Although the main platform is external, the communications team retains decision-making authority over many of its own touchpoints. It can review campaign pages, forms, emails, newsletters, automations, notifications and welcome sequences. This also includes competitions, in-house applications, digital communities and gamified experiences.
The review should look at the overall experience: what language is used, how often people are contacted, how the individual progresses through the journey, what consent is requested and how difficult it is to opt out. It is not necessary to control the entire platform to correct decisions that depend on the organisation.
Procuring a tool is also part of communication governance. Before choosing a provider, it is advisable to understand what mechanisms they use to increase engagement, which notifications are enabled by default, and how users can configure their frequency.
They should also explain how they protect minors, what data informs their recommendations, whether personalisation can be turned off, and what options a person has to stop receiving communications. Another important question is how they identify and mitigate the risks of compulsive use associated with their product.
A provider unable to answer these questions clearly is unlikely to guarantee that its tool is consistent with the campaign’s values, promises, and accountability criteria.
The communications team is often one of the first to spot inconsistencies between the message and the digital experience, as it receives and listens to public feedback.
If the product contradicts the message, this information should be passed on to the design, technology, legal, procurement, management or data protection teams.
Highlighting the problem does not mean taking full responsibility. It means preventing the organisation from treating the digital experience as something separate from its reputation.
Before launching a campaign, app, platform or digital experience, a team can review these ten questions:
Not all the answers depend on communication. Even so, asking the questions changes the project’s quality.
It also helps to document decisions. If an organisation accepts a pressure mechanism, it should know why it is doing so, who it might affect and what measures it has put in place to mitigate the risk.
Addictive design is often presented as a matter of platforms, algorithms or regulation. For communications teams, it is also a question of consistency.
An organisation loses consistency when it talks about autonomy whilst designing user journeys that make it difficult to stop, advocates for wellbeing whilst rewarding continued engagement, or asks for trust within an experience that exerts pressure.
That is where the message begins to lose credibility.
Communications teams do not control the entire digital architecture, but they can stop treating it as someone else’s problem. They can raise questions in briefings, review their own assets, challenge metrics, seek explanations from contracted companies and platforms, and highlight inconsistencies within the organisation before they damage its reputation.
Blaming the user obscures the service architecture that shapes their decisions.
Trust is built on what we say and on how we allow people to participate, opt out, leave, or pause.
If you work in public communications, digital campaigns or projects aimed at young people, I’d love to hear from you on LinkedIn: where do you see the greatest risk today – in notifications, retention metrics, personalisation or a lack of control over platforms?
I look forward to reading your thoughts.
Addictive design brings together mechanisms aimed at prolonging or regaining attention, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, constant notifications, streaks or highly personalised recommendations.
A single feature is not enough to assess the risk. Its frequency, how easy it is to turn off, the target audience, and the user’s actual ability to stop the experience also matter.
Dark patterns seek to influence a decision through deceptive, confusing or unbalanced interfaces. Addictive design seeks to retain or regain attention and can encourage compulsive use.
The two can overlap. A notification may serve as a reminder, or it may use pressure, urgency and social cues to encourage a person to return.
The DSA requires platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks, and sets out specific obligations regarding privacy, security and the protection of minors.
The European guidelines published in 2025 recommend protective default settings, changes to recommendation systems and measures to address problematic or addictive behaviour. These guidelines serve as a reference for assessing compliance, although following them does not automatically guarantee that a platform complies with the DSA.
It affects trust when the user experience contradicts what the campaign promises. A message about autonomy loses credibility if the interface is pushy. A campaign about wellbeing raises doubts if it relies on constant notifications or on mechanisms that make it difficult to stop using the service.
The individual perceives the message and the design as part of the same relationship with the organisation.
You can incorporate responsible criteria into the briefing, review the assets you do control, consult with suppliers, question retention metrics and document inconsistencies between the message and the experience.
You can also escalate risks to the product, legal, technology, management, procurement or data protection teams. Your ability to influence remains, even if you do not control the entire platform.
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