Netflix's sneaky autoplay trick is messing with your brain

Autoplay is usually marketed as a convenient feature for streamers, who can stay engaged with their favorite content. But new research now shows that there’s a potential downside for users.

It’s become a staple of modern streaming platforms such as Netflix – and indeed, isn’t it neat that autoplay automatically begins the next episode or even another movie while you can keep sitting on the couch?

Well, it turns out that such convenience could be costing us quite a bit in terms of control over our time and decisions.

That’s because autoplay is actually a dark pattern feature, designed to capture your attention, potentially extending platform sessions beyond what users would have otherwise intended them to be. The feature leads to unhealthy consumption habits – such as disrupted sleep.

That’s what a new study from researchers in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago has explored. According to this particular research, autoplay is not an innocuous feature at all – it’s making us addicted to streaming platforms.

More mindful watching

Researchers conducted an experimental study with 76 heavy Netflix users in the US to analyze the impact of a specific attention capture feature, autoplay, on key viewing metrics. Half the group turned off autoplay while the control group left it on.

The study found that disabling autoplay on Netflix significantly “reduced key content consumption aggregates, including average daily watching and average session length.”

In other words, these users spent less time – about 18 minutes per Netflix watching session on average – binge-watching.

Moreover, study participants who had the autoplay switched off reported taking more time between episodes. This allowed them to reflect on their viewing decisions and think about the content they were watching more mindfully – to simply have a moment to make a decision whether it’s time to stop.

One surprised study participant said: “It did make me realize how many episodes I was watching more so than before. I didn’t pay attention to it as much because it was automatic before. Now I was like, ‘Oh ok I had to do this three times so this is the 3rd episode.’”

Another admitted: “I felt it was annoying that it didn’t move on to the next episode if I was doing something, but it also helped me to be in silence and track my viewing better.”

Around one-third of participants said they planned to keep autoplay turned off after the experiment, seemingly happy that this way, it’s harder to lose track of time.

Netflix should give users a clear choice

“These findings corroborate the core arguments made by many dark patterns researchers that ‘attention capture damaging patterns’ interface designs capture and manipulate user attention,” say the researchers.

They also point out that the findings underscore the need for streaming platforms to rethink how autoplay is integrated into their user interfaces.

It is, of course, highly unlikely that the streamers would consciously make any decision contradicting their bottom line – maximizing the time viewers spend on them. But the researchers suggest they could at least turn off autoplay by default.

Furthermore, “future improvements might include giving users the option to specify how many episodes they want autoplay to queue before prompting them for a decision or offering longer countdown times before automatically starting the next episode,” authors of the study say.

They also employ the “what about the children” argument, saying underage users could be exposed to content they shouldn’t be watching if autoplay is turned on.

As a reminder, when autoplay is disabled in one’s Netflix account settings, the Next Episode button still appears, but the next episode is not played until the viewer chooses to do so. In 2020, Netflix added the ability for users to disable autoplay from their account settings but they’re only found only on the browser version of the platform.

The feature is also employed by other similar platforms such as Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video. Short-form online video platforms like YouTube and TikTok also feature autoplaying content.