> You need to hijack those dopamine pathways to get adoption.

That is absolutely untrue, and in fact has it backwards. Lots of tech products (even social media) got tons of adoption by appealing to a smaller set of users and fulfilling their needs extremely well. It's only when products, pushed by the demands of "infinite growth", decide the drug dealer path is the only way to go, that we're all just lobotomized versions of ourselves with "one working thumb" (seriously, this HN discussion of the tyranny of the marginal user is one of my all time faves, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509507)

And my argument isn't that, as you seem to say, that checking in with your friends is somehow equivalent to eating your spinach. I'm just arguing that apps only need to go down this "lowest common denominator" version of ourselves when they're not satisfied being great products for a lot of people - all that matters to them is more people than last year, which requires an enshittification of the app eventually.