"You know when you open Instagram or Twitter and it takes a few moments to load updates? That's no accident. Again, the expectation is part of what makes intermittent variable rewards so addictive. This is because, without that three-second delay, Instagram wouldn't feel variable. There's no sense of will I win? because you'd know instantly. So the delay isn't the app loading. It's the cogs spinning on the slot machine."
Can anyone confirm if this is true or not? Do social media apps insert `sleep()` calls on startup for gamification reasons? I've only seen that for things like save dialogs, but I also don't work in social media.