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You open Instagram to check one message.
Then you watch a Reel.
Then another.
You scroll a little further. Another video starts automatically. Something else catches your attention. Before you realise it, the few minutes you intended to spend on the app have become much longer.
For years, platforms have called this engagement.
But regulators in Europe are increasingly asking a different question: when does engagement become addictive design?
On 10 July 2026, the European Commission announced its preliminary finding that Meta may have breached the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) through the addictive design of Facebook and Instagram. The investigation focuses on features including infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and highly personalised recommendation systems.
The findings are not yet final. Meta has the right to examine the Commission’s case and respond before a final decision is made.
But the investigation raises a much wider issue than Meta alone.
It asks whether the way a digital product is designed can itself become a regulatory risk.
We Have Become Used to the Endless Scroll
Infinite scroll barely feels like a feature anymore.
There is no “next page”. There is no natural stopping point. New content simply appears.
Autoplay works in much the same way. One video ends and another begins without the user having to make another decision.
Add personalised recommendations and the experience becomes even more powerful. The platform learns what attracts your attention and continuously offers more of it.
The Commission’s preliminary assessment is particularly interesting because it is looking at these features together rather than treating each one in isolation.
According to the Commission, features such as infinite scroll, autoplay and highly personalised recommendations can encourage users to continue scrolling and contribute to excessive or compulsive use. (European Commission)
Individually, each feature may appear harmless.
Together, they can create an environment where there is almost no natural reason to stop.
Engagement or Something More?
Every digital business wants people to use its product.
An online shop wants customers to browse.
A streaming service wants people to watch.
A news website wants readers to continue reading.
A social network wants users to interact with other users.
There is nothing inherently wrong with designing a product people enjoy using.
The difficult question is what happens when the business objective becomes maximising the amount of time a person remains inside the product.
Product teams can measure clicks, viewing time, retention, daily active users and countless other behaviours.
Algorithms can then optimise the experience around those measurements.
And this creates an uncomfortable possibility.
If success is measured mainly by how long users stay, a system may become extremely good at preventing them from leaving.
It is easy to call it engagement when the whole design is built to make people stay longer.
At some point, a useful feature stops being just a feature when it is designed to be hard to leave.
Why the EU Is Looking at Minors
The Commission’s concerns are not limited to adults.
Its investigation specifically considers risks to minors and vulnerable adults.
Among other things, the Commission says Meta did not adequately take into account available information concerning the amount of time minors spend on Facebook or Instagram at night. It also examined whether formats such as Reels and Stories could contribute to excessive or compulsive use.
This sits alongside a separate DSA investigation concerning children under 13.
In April 2026, the Commission separately issued preliminary findings that Facebook and Instagram had not sufficiently prevented children below the platforms’ stated minimum age of 13 from accessing the services. Those findings are also preliminary.
Put the two issues together and the regulatory concern becomes clearer.
It is not simply:
“Does the platform have rules for children?”
It is also:
“How does the platform actually behave once a child is using it?”
Those are very different questions.
But Facebook and Instagram Already Have Parental Controls
They do.
They also provide screen-time tools and awareness measures.
The Commission nevertheless preliminarily concluded that these measures were not sufficiently effective in addressing the risks it identified.
For example, it found that time-management tools could be easily dismissed and might not meaningfully reduce usage. It also questioned the effectiveness of parental controls where parents need sufficient technical knowledge, time and effort to configure and understand them.
That raises another important compliance issue.
Providing a safety feature is not necessarily the same as effectively reducing a risk.
A company may be able to show that a button, warning, setting or parental control exists.
Regulators may increasingly ask what that measure actually achieves in practice.
What Could Meta Be Required to Change?
This is where the case becomes particularly significant.
The Commission is not only discussing better warnings.
At this stage, it considers that design changes may be necessary.
Examples identified by the Commission include disabling certain addictive features such as autoplay and infinite scroll by default, introducing more effective screen-time breaks, and making recommender systems less focused on engagement.
That potentially affects the product itself.
For technology companies, this distinction matters.
Compliance has traditionally been associated with privacy policies, terms and conditions, consent notices, reporting mechanisms and internal procedures.
But digital regulation is increasingly reaching much deeper into how products actually work.
A beautifully written policy cannot fix a product whose underlying design creates the very risk the policy claims to manage.
And This Is Not Only About Meta
Meta is receiving the attention now, but the regulatory issue is broader.
This suggests something larger is developing.
The regulatory conversation is moving beyond what platforms contain toward how platforms are built.
That distinction could eventually matter far beyond traditional social media.
Think about gaming platforms, streaming services, online marketplaces, AI applications and other digital products built around continuous interaction and personalised recommendations.
Not every engagement feature is addictive, and not every business using these techniques will fall within the same DSA obligations as Meta.
But the direction of travel is difficult to ignore.
The 6% Number Gets Attention…But It Is Not the Most Interesting Part
That is naturally the headline-grabbing number.
But the potentially more important consequence is what enforcement could mean for product design.
A fine is paid once.
A requirement to change how a platform keeps hundreds of millions of people engaged could affect the product continuously.
That may ultimately be much more significant.
The New Compliance Question: What Is Your Product Optimising For?
Businesses increasingly use algorithms, personalisation and AI to decide what users see next.
The technology can become extremely effective at achieving whatever objective it is given.
More clicks.
More purchases.
More views.
More interaction.
More time in the app.
But optimisation does not automatically ask whether achieving that target creates another risk.
That responsibility remains with the people designing, deploying and governing the system.
The lesson from the Commission’s Meta investigation therefore goes beyond Facebook and Instagram.
Businesses developing digital products may increasingly need to ask not only:
Can we make users stay longer?
But also:
Should the product be designed this way in the first place?
When Staying Becomes the Product
Facebook and Instagram became enormously successful partly because people want to use them.
That distinction should not disappear from the discussion. Users have agency and popular products are not automatically harmful simply because people spend time using them.
The regulatory concern is more specific.
What happens when the architecture of the service itself continually removes stopping points, automatically supplies the next piece of content and learns which content is most likely to keep each individual watching?
Europe is beginning to draw a line.
Where exactly that line ultimately sits will depend on the outcome of proceedings such as this one.
For years, the digital economy has treated more engagement as an almost unquestioned measure of success.
The next era of digital regulation may force businesses to consider something else:
A product can be extremely successful at keeping someone’s attention and still be badly designed for the person giving it.
Keywords: This article discusses Facebook, Instagram, Meta, addictive design, the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), infinite scroll, autoplay, personalised recommendations, digital compliance, platform design, user wellbeing and online safety
The European Commission’s findings concerning Meta’s addictive design discussed in this article are preliminary. Meta has the right to respond, and the findings do not prejudge the final outcome of the proceedings.
7 August 2026