It’s easy to forget about Instagram Reels.
Instagram’s TikTok competitor was unleashed last week, bringing a new Explore tab that attempts to replicate TikTok’s video feed. In addition to a new camera layout designed to make creation easier (spoiler warning: it only made things more complicated), Instagram’s goal was obvious: make Reels a new go-to experience on the app, just like Made Stories in 2016 inflated.
But a week after the launch, Reels feels approached. It’s impossible not to notice the flood of TikTok reload videos, with TikTok watermarks still supporting the top left corner of the reel after reel. The authentic rules usually seem to come from featured Instagram makers, and they are often based on popular TikTok trends.
The problem is, it’s easy to miss Reels altogether. I need to actively remind myself that I can create a reel (it’s on a second tab in the camera screen) or that I can navigate to Navigate to view reels. Reels are not labeled as such in Stories, so they just play like regular videos, and I did not encounter any videos with lines on my direct feed. Nothing is served to me.
That’s the key to TikTok’s not-so-secret recipe for success: it completely dispels the paradox of choice, a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz that refers to how more choices can lead to a sense of paralysis, not being able to really choose. TikTok never lets you leave its first screen, the For You Page, an endless sequence of videos flipping from one to the other at the flick of a finger. Everything is served in one place, designed to bring videos to you instead of you finding them.
The paradox of choice is a recurring problem for video games. There are a wealth of entertainment platforms designed to show people what they want (Netflix, YouTube, Twitch). But in reality, they often make the action to look and consume too overwhelming, because you have to choose from an endless array of options. Over at Netflix, it’s an issue that the team is aware of. Netflix survey in 2016 discovered that if people do not find something within 60-90 seconds, they switch to something else. A Nielsen study last year found that most people spend about seven minutes trying to find something to watch on streaming services like Netflix.
TikTok solves this problem in two simple (though extremely difficult to design) ways: a finely tuned personalization algorithm that apparently no other app can compete with and a constant stream of videos all in one feed siphone. TikTok does not require you to go anywhere when you open the app; just start scrolling, and more videos will appear. Very soon it will also figure out what you are interested in (do nothing about witches and skateboards, but love cats and dancing) and will surface more of these types of videos without you needing to do your part other than watch.
Mindless scrolling completely removes the paradox of choice. I don’t have to think about what to find to look at or worry about what I see next. Everything is chosen for me, endless. Since TikTok is also more of an entertainment network than a social media platform, there is no pressure to actively participate. The result is an app that requires no effort or knowledge to use, executed by an algorithm that constantly overlaps hyper-targeted videos, depending on individual interests, all on one page.
It is the last part of that equation that is most important. Unlike Reels, which Instagram seeks people to enjoy, TikTok simply overlaps with content. Eugene Wei, a former product officer at Amazon and Hulu, noted that Instagram is now “a Frankenstein of feeds and formats and features spread across a somewhat confusing constellation of apps.”
Instagram baked Stories into the app’s core experience – it’s built right into the main feed and camera screen – but Reels feels like an afterthought. There may be a fun creator community on Instagram Reels, but unless it pops up when opening the app, how likely is it that I will seek it out instead of just scrolling through my Feed and Stories?
“There’s a reason many people in the US today describe social media as work,” Wei wrote in his blog post. “And why are many, like me, finding TikTok a much more fun app to spend time in?”
It is a much more fun app to spend time with. I do not have to ask if I find something I am interested in when I open TikTok or spend time trying to find something to look at. I do not have to think at all. I just open the app and stare at a sea of funny videos until I have my serotonin fix for the day. After spending hours with people on Twitter or trying something new to watch on Netflix and YouTube, having an app that clears all thoughts and leaves me completely softened by the paradox of choice is a welcome distraction.
