Italian version

The Earth’s resources are not infinite. The debate over resource scarcity began in the last century, and the issue grows more pressing every year. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that we’ll run into trouble if we keep consuming certain resources at a rate faster than they can be replenished.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how our consumption habits are influenced by how much things cost us. I would go further: the cost structures associated with the use of certain resources can unconsciously push us toward wasteful behavior. In my view, this is the case with flat-rate plans, which have now become the standard for our subscriptions to telecommunications services in the broadest sense: cell phone service, home internet, and streaming from various platforms. We pay a fixed monthly amount regardless of usage.

In reality, however, nothing fits this model; every use of a resource corresponds to its immediate consumption. Every phone call, selfie, streamed movie, or emoji relies on lines, telecommunications equipment, and end-user devices such as smartphones, computers, and televisions—all of which consume physical resources not only during operation but also during production and disposal at the end of their useful life.
With flat-rate plans, we act as if everything were free, leading to the proliferation of billions upon billions of useless messages and emojis, unnecessary phone calls, and superfluous streaming. We would behave very differently if every unit of consumption were paid for individually. This particular effect on our behavior is studied in behavioral economics and is called the “taximeter effect.” Paying per use bothers us psychologically because every instance of use is seen as a loss, whereas with a flat rate, every bit of consumption is considered free.

It makes me think about how naturally we watch the videos that pop up as we scroll through social media, with our finger quickly sliding down the screen. I asked Copilot what the electricity consumption from social scrolling is in Italy. With all the necessary approximations, it amounts to 10–15% of an average thermal power plant, and here we are considering only the effect of immediate consumption, neglecting the physical resources dedicated to the production and maintenance of transmission lines, network equipment, and user devices.

Before concluding, I’d like to highlight another aspect that represents a significant side effect. Perceiving social scrolling as cost-free can expose us to the risk of addiction to what is known as “infinite scrolling.” Since there is no stopping point, we risk becoming trapped in the mechanism of variable rewards. Variable rewards are rewards that arrive unpredictably: you don’t know when they’ll come, nor how rewarding they’ll be. The human brain tends to get hooked when it finds itself in situations like this, it’s the same principle as slot machines: it’s the dopamine of anticipation. Dopamine doesn’t kick in when you receive the reward, but when you might receive it. The brain therefore remains in a state of “excited anticipation” for what we might receive with the next swipe.

We’ve reached the end of the article; on this site, there’s no possibility of continuous scrolling, so no dopamine rush 😀.

You can send your comment to info@esperienzedivalore.it, I will be happy to respond.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)