The EU Just Told Designers What We Already Knew
In February 2026, the European Commission officially told TikTok that its infinite scroll feature violates the Digital Services Act. The message was blunt: change your addictive design or face massive fines.
TikTok isn't alone. Meta's Instagram and Facebook are next. Brussels is going after the entire pattern — the endless, boundary-less feed that keeps you scrolling past your bedtime, past your stop on the train, past the point where you're actually enjoying yourself.
For designers, this isn't just a legal story. It's a reckoning. The most ubiquitous interaction pattern on the internet is being called what it is: a manipulation tool.
Let's talk about how we got here, why infinite scroll works so well, and what you should use instead.
A Brief History of the Endless Feed
Infinite scroll wasn't born evil. Aza Raskin — son of computing legend Jef Raskin — invented the pattern around 2006 to solve a real problem: pagination was clunky. Clicking “Next Page” broke your flow. Why not just... keep loading?
The idea was elegant. It worked beautifully for image galleries, maps, and content you wanted to browse casually. Then social media got hold of it.
By 2012, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram had all adopted infinite scroll as their primary navigation pattern. Not because it was the best UX for their users — but because it maximized a metric that mattered more to them: time on site.
In 2019, Raskin publicly apologized. “I didn't foresee the consequences,” he told The Times. He described it as “one of the first products designed to not simply help a user, but to deliberately keep them online for as long as possible.”
The inventor called his own creation addictive by design. Seven years later, the EU agrees.
Why Infinite Scroll Works (Too Well)
Infinite scroll hijacks three psychological mechanisms that your brain can't easily override:
🎰 Variable Reward Schedules
Every scroll reveals something new — but you never know if it'll be interesting, boring, funny, or shocking. This is the exact same mechanism that makes slot machines addictive. Your brain releases dopamine not from the reward itself, but from the anticipation of a possible reward. As long as the next scroll might show something great, you keep going.
🚫 No Stopping Cues
Think about eating from a bowl vs. eating from a buffet line that refills itself. Research by Brian Wansink showed people eat 73% more soup from self-refilling bowls because there's no visual cue that you've had “enough.” Infinite scroll is the self-refilling bowl. There's no page break, no “end,” no natural moment to think “I'm done.”
⚡ The Sunk Cost of Scrolling
Once you've scrolled for 10 minutes, your brain rationalizes continuing. “I've already invested this time, I might as well keep going.” Navigating away feels like abandoning your investment. This is why people describe infinite scroll sessions with the same regret language as gambling: “I didn't mean to spend that long.”
Put these together and you get a pattern that's less like a design feature and more like a slot machine for your thumb.
The Case Against Infinite Scroll
Beyond the ethical concerns, infinite scroll has real UX problems:
You can't find that thing you saw earlier
Good luck scrolling back to that post from 20 minutes ago. Without a stable position in the feed, content is essentially disposable.
The footer is dead
Legal links, contact info, navigation — all unreachable on pages with infinite scroll. Users literally cannot get to the bottom of your site.
Accessibility suffers
Screen readers struggle with dynamically loaded content. Keyboard navigation becomes unpredictable. The scroll position can't be bookmarked or shared.
Performance degrades
Every loaded item stays in the DOM. After enough scrolling, the page bogs down — especially on mobile. Memory usage climbs until the browser tab crashes.
SEO is a nightmare
Search engines can't scroll. Content that only loads on user interaction is essentially invisible to Google. If your content needs to be found, infinite scroll buries it.
When Infinite Scroll Actually Works
Infinite scroll isn't inherently evil — it's a tool, and context matters. It works well when:
Users are browsing, not searching
Pinterest, Unsplash, and image galleries work because the goal is exploration, not finding a specific thing.
Content is visual and uniform
Grid layouts of similar-sized items (photos, products) scroll naturally. Mixed content with varying importance doesn't.
There's a clear “done” signal
If users can tell when they've seen everything (a “You've reached the end” message, a total count), the manipulative edge is removed.
Time-on-site isn't the goal
If your business model doesn't profit from keeping users scrolling longer, infinite scroll is a convenience, not a trap.
4 Better Alternatives to Infinite Scroll
1. Classic Pagination
The OG. Page 1, Page 2, Page 3. It's not sexy, but it gives users a sense of position, lets them bookmark results, and plays perfectly with search engines.
Best for: Search results, documentation, e-commerce catalogs, anything where users need to find specific content or return to a position.
2. “Load More” Button
Same lazy-loading benefit as infinite scroll, but with a crucial difference: the user decides when to load more. This preserves the stopping cue that infinite scroll removes. Google Search uses this pattern — and they know a thing or two about UX at scale.
Best for: Social feeds, comment threads, product listings — anywhere infinite scroll is tempting but ethical concerns matter.
3. Hybrid Scroll with Progress
Content loads continuously, but you show a progress indicator: “Showing 1–50 of 2,340 results” or a scroll progress bar. This keeps the smooth experience while giving users the context they need to self-regulate.
Best for: Long product catalogs, search results where browsing is expected, any content with a known total count.
4. Virtual Scrolling
Only render what's visible in the viewport, recycling DOM nodes as the user scrolls. You get the performance of pagination with the feel of infinite scroll. Libraries like react-window and tanstack-virtual make this straightforward.
Best for: Large datasets, data tables, any list where DOM performance is a concern (thousands of items).
The Decision Framework
Not sure what to use? Ask these four questions:
- 1.
Does the user have a specific goal?
If yes → pagination or load more. If they're browsing casually → scroll is fine.
- 2.
Does your business profit from more scroll time?
If yes → that's a red flag. Add stopping cues or switch to load more.
- 3.
Will users need to find something again?
If yes → pagination. Infinite scroll makes content unfindable after you scroll past it.
- 4.
Does the content have a natural end?
If yes → show it. “You've seen everything” is the most respectful UX pattern on the internet.
What This Means for Designers
The EU's action isn't going to kill infinite scroll. But it's shifting the conversation from “does it increase engagement?” to “does it respect the user?”
That's a conversation worth having. As designers, we shape behavior. Every scroll interaction, every loading pattern, every feed algorithm is a choice about what kind of relationship we want with our users.
The best designers in 2026 won't be the ones who maximize engagement metrics. They'll be the ones who build products people are glad they used — not products they feel trapped by.
The bottom line:
Infinite scroll is a tool. Like any tool, it can be used well or abused. The EU is drawing a line against abuse. As designers, we should have drawn it ourselves a long time ago.
Next time you reach for infinite scroll, ask yourself: am I making this for the user, or for the metric? The answer should guide your design.
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