Why it is everywhere
Flicking with a thumb is far easier than tapping tiny page numbers. In Fogg's (2009) behaviour model, infinite scroll drives the ability barrier toward zero. Loranger (2014) notes it suits aimless browsing but not finding or comparing specific items. During loading, skeleton screens make gaps feel shorter.
Hidden costs
Three common problems: the footer becomes unreachable, returning from a detail page loses position, and search engines may not see scroll-loaded content. Google Search Central advises giving each chunk a unique URL reachable by ordinary links, which ties directly to SEO. Measuring attention by viewport time, as Lagun et al. (2014) did, shows that scrolling far is not the same as reading deeply.
Stopping cues and alternatives
In Wansink et al.'s (2005) bottomless-bowl study, people eating from secretly refilling bowls ate more without feeling fuller; endless feeds likewise erase stopping cues. Lukoff et al. (2021) found autoplay and recommendation feeds reduce sense of agency, and Mark et al. (2008) linked interruptions to stress. Designs aimed only at time-on-site edge toward dark patterns. For goal-driven services, a load-more button or an 'all caught up' marker is a sensible compromise.
FAQ
- Infinite scroll or pagination?
- Infinite scroll for browsing feeds; pagination or load-more for lists people search and compare.
- Is infinite scroll bad for SEO?
- Scroll-only loading can hinder indexing; unique URLs and plain links per chunk solve it.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-27
References
- Loranger, H. (2014, February 2). Infinite scrolling is not for every website. Nielsen Norman Group. Pros, cons and suitable site types for infinite scrolling.
- Google. (n.d.). Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search. Google Search Central. How to keep infinite and load-more pages indexable by search engines.
- Wansink, B., Painter, J. E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless bowls: Why visual cues of portion size may influence intake. Obesity Research, 13(1), 93–100. The refilling-bowl study, an analogy for removing stopping cues.
- Lukoff, K., Lyngs, U., Zade, H., Liao, J. V., Choi, J., Fan, K., Munson, S. A., & Hiniker, A. (2021). How the design of YouTube influences user sense of agency. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–17). ACM. Finds autoplay and feeds reduce users' sense of agency.
- Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 107–110). ACM. Shows interruptions raise stress, relevant to attention-grabbing feeds.
- Fogg, B. J. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Article 40). ACM. Motivation-ability-trigger model explaining why effortless scrolling is powerful.
- Lagun, D., Hsieh, C.-H., Webster, D., & Navalpakkam, V. (2014). Towards better measurement of attention and satisfaction in mobile search. In Proceedings of the 37th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 113–122). ACM. Measures mobile attention via viewport time, useful for reading scroll metrics.