Sticking to the screen
In this part of István Liska's series of articles, you'll find out whether you spend more or less time glued to your phone than the average person, and before you start blaming yourself, he'll show you the subtle and not-so-subtle ways you're glued to your screen. In the end, he also looks at the effects and consequences of this new 'screen-addicted' behaviour on our lives.
Scroll through the news feed. Has this become the new smoking?
A few decades ago, smoking was still considered cool. With ads like Marlboro Man, the tobacco lobby managed to trivialise the health effects for a long time. We are not good at cases where the harmful effects of something are only apparent in the long term, and it is even worse when those effects are not physical but mental. We could say of former smokers that they were not very clever to blindly trust that smoking was not harmful. However, before we start judging, let's ask ourselves: Could this be how future generations will see us? Will the first generations who used the internet, smart devices, social media widely and indiscriminately? Could it be that our understanding of the world is limited to our current, limited level?
People of all ages think of themselves as the most advanced, but it is only in retrospect from subsequent generations that the limits of that age's thinking become apparent. It is usually only by looking back from a more advanced context that we can make sense of the developmental stages that preceded it.
It is easy to create a different image of ourselves in our own minds than the reality. One of the best examples of this is values. Let's say we value family. But on the weekends we choose the former between a deadline at work and family, or we haven't called grandma in months because there was always something more important. We can fool ourselves, but it's our work that we value most, not our family. It is worth examining the difference between our values and our daily choices.
Our true values are what we spend our time and money on. Not what we think or even say is important to us.
The author uses this simple formula when he is not clear about what he considers important:
It is cruel, but at least it honestly reflects real priorities and values.
Why have you brought this here now? Because it's worth looking at how much time you actually spend on activities such as reading social media feeds, making posts, responding to other people's posts, etc. These are the global figures from the Digital 2020 report:
How is it going for you? With today's phones, it's easy to track your screen time. Let's stop for a moment. We ask you to check your phone for your current numbers.
What do you see? More or less than the average 3.4 hours/day? Have you started to explain to yourself that of course, but that's just because...
Okay, so now we're addicts?
Psychologists say there are two basic types of addiction:
Dependence on chemical substances (mostly drugs)
Behavioural addiction
The symptoms of behavioural addiction are also similar to those of substance addiction in most cases: irresistible cravings, feelings of reward, loss of tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, deterioration of everyday functioning.
A few decades ago, we could only get hooked on a few mainly chemical-based hooks, such as alcohol, cigarettes or drugs, but these were much harder to come by. Today, however, we have to swim among many more hooks: Outlook, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Pornhub, online stores and their ilk. These new addictions don't require you to take any drugs. What's more, these hooks are embedded in tools that we use frequently every day for contact, work and entertainment. So it's very hard not to get hooked.Behavioural addictions have been with us for a while, but have become really common in the last decade.Some, like gambling addiction or exercise addiction, have been with us for a while, but internet and smartphone addiction are brand new. The list is getting longer and we don't yet know the strength of these hooks.
Having the full arsenal of digital technology in everyone's pocket is the best breeding ground ever for behavioural addictions to spread.
Adam Alter, professor of psychology and marketing at New York University, has written a book on the relationship between technology and addictions, called Irresistible.
Alter's research shows that new technologies are highly effective in supporting the development of behavioural addictions. He also acknowledges that these addictions are "mild" compared to, for example, smoking or drug addictions. If you are told to quit Facebook, you are unlikely to suffer from withdrawal symptoms severe enough to sneak out to an internet café in the evening. On the flip side, if you stay on it, it can have a devastating effect on your mental health. You might not escape to Facebook, but if you have the app in your pocket, a mild addiction can make it harder to resist constantly checking the app. The other thing Alter's research has revealed is that the addictive properties of new technologies are not accidental, but are features designed with engineering precision, deliberately to induce such an effect.
The user experience polished to a diamond
Alter writes that technology has brought convenience and speed to our lives, but at a high price. A like on Facebook or Instagram pushes reward "buttons" in the brain, as does a successful completion of a World of Warcraft mission or a tweet message that gets hundreds of shares. The people who make these software and perfect the user experience they trigger are pretty good at what they do.
Thousands of tests are run on millions of users to see how they use a particular digital product. They test and analyse what works and what doesn't. What background colours, fonts, sounds, buttons, etc. maximise time spent in the app and minimise the risk of abandonment. For example, whether a button in red or blue brings more clicks, selecting two control groups of up to millions of people will result in the same button in blue for one group and red for the other. With today's data processing speeds, test runners can see in real time which button triggers the better effect, and then the colour that brings more clicks becomes the actual choice. Chances are you've taken part in such a test, you just don't know it. Influencing human behaviour has become part of the cost-benefit calculations of tech companies that look at whether a step is taken once, twice or 100 times by users. If a change is valued by users and the benefits outweigh the costs, it would be hard to stop following this practice, especially if it turns, say, into a habit of using an app.
Digital products have some huge advantages that will always make them unbeatable over physical products: they can be tested quickly, cheaply and unobtrusively in live use, user reactions can be seen and measured instantly, and it is easy to get new versions to users.
Technological and methodological advances have given software companies such opportunities that testing digital products has now become a brutally efficient improvement machine.
Psychology, the accomplice of technology
Alongside technological advances, what helps the ever-innovative tech sector create irresistible screens is psychology. This science is also evolving at rocket speed and the latest findings in neuropsychology, behavioural psychology and social psychology are being used and actively built upon in a growing number of fields, such as marketing (look it up: neuromarketing) and sport. In the new attention economy, these fields are playing an increasingly important role. The more we understand our drivers, the more we can predict and personalise the experience a product will trigger in our brain.
Neuro-aesthetics, for example, studies which parts of the brain are activated by particular visual elements: a picture, colours, images. The signals in the brain are studied using MRI and other modern machines. In this way, data is collected and analysed to see what effect each design has. By building on unconscious preferences, they can predict with unprecedented accuracy which product design will best serve user tastes.
But what is already being used extensively are our vulnerabilities, well known in behavioural and social psychology. Our personalities are structured very similarly and we share the same fears, desires, emotions and psychological needs. Building on these, we can influence the behaviour of entire crowds, and you or I are no exception.
There are basically four essential elements that tech companies build on to create what is known in digital product development as "habit-forming", i.e. products that create behavioural dependency:
Social approval
Intermittent reinforcement
FOMO - fear of missing out
Bandwagon effect
For those who want to look deeper, there is a lot of valuable content on these topics in English.
Social acceptance
The need to belong is as strong as hunger. Even long ago, when we hunted and gathered in tribes of 100-150 people, we made sure we cultivated our social relationships because our survival depended on it. If we didn't have close and stable relationships, we could easily find ourselves outside the protection of the tribe, which meant almost certain death in those days. In the 21st century, technology is tapping into this deeply encoded need. When you get a like on your Instagram post, it also pushes your reward button that your "tribe" (circle of friends) accepts you and you are a valued member of the community.
Random reward
Harvard psychology professor B.F. Skinner, one of the 20th century's most prominent psychologists, proved that there is nothing more irresistible than random reward. Consistency and timing are key. In his experiments, he put animals in a box with a push-down lever. First, when the animal pushed the lever, food appeared, and when it was full, it stopped pushing the lever. If no food came for a long time, the animals stopped pushing the lever after a while. However, when food appeared randomly when the lever was pressed, the animals were unable to stop pressing the lever. He also found that constant reward is the best way to establish a habit initially, but that later the habit can be reinforced by random rewards. Our brains are wired so that the possibility of an uncertain reward boosts dopamine secretion, the greater the uncertainty, the bigger the dopamine splash the brain gets when the reward arrives. That's why when you post, you often check to see if anyone has already liked it.
FOMO - fear of missing out
If I don't check my newsfeed, my messages, my insta-stories, I'm bound to miss something or be left out. There's an anxiety that I'm sure I'm missing something important. This can be related to social acceptance, when we miss out on shared experiences with others: but they're having a good time, they're out to dinner, they're at the cinema...and why didn't they tell me?
With the use of social media, everyone has started to share their experiences, so we are constantly exposed to many more experiences from others. Because of this, it's easy to feel left out of a lot.
The other theme that this fear often sticks to is related to information overload, for example, if we are anxious about missing out on some valuable, useful information or trend if we are not always present in the virtual space.
These fears manifest themselves differently for everyone, but most often they cause a persistent sense of loss.
Bandwagon effect
When we do something (or believe in something) because others are doing it. It is also closely linked to social acceptance and fear of being left out. If I don't do something like others around me, I might not be popular or I might miss out on a cool trend and get left behind. Or maybe I must be seeing things wrong because so many people can't be wrong. Facebook, for example, has brilliantly made people believe that social media is a service you can't live without. With a vision of connecting people, Facebook has made itself a basic service, like electricity or the internet. Something that everyone "just uses" without question or criticism. And if everyone does it, it makes me feel like it would be weird if I didn't do it. It's the perfect position for Facebook. It keeps users in without having to show any concrete benefits.
There is now a sure-fire recipe for habit formation
Our habits are one of the biggest influences on our lives. According to a study from Duke University, our routines drive us 45% of the day. It helps us to do our habitual actions quickly and with minimal brainwork. These are our battery saver activities. Which is totally good. The problem usually comes when we decide we want to break a habit or develop a new one. Now that's a challenge. But now it's not just us who want to influence our own habits.
Digital product developers have found that we use products much more when there is an intrinsic motivation and trigger, without any external stimulus. Because in most cases we act on autopilot without conscious thought. We often hide our inner motivation, even from ourselves.
If you're unsure, you'll open a Google search before you even think about it. If you're lonely, before you know it you're on Facebook, Instagram or Tinder. Before you know it, you're watching videos on YouTube.Without being triggered by anyone or anything outside of you.
It's like going out to the garage, getting in your car, stroking the dashboard, looking around and then getting out. You didn't want to go anywhere, but you still felt the urge to get in the car.Oh, and you'd do that, say, 20 times a day at completely random times. With a car, it doesn't even occur to us not to use it to get from A to B.Smart devices, on the other hand, are used far beyond their intended purpose, yet nobody feels weird about it.
Ensure that the user uses your solution to their problem with sufficient frequency
That's the recipe for habit formation, as Nir Eyal, US-based tech entrepreneur, investor and researcher, writes in detail. "He calls it the " Hook model", for good reason. Let's look at the four iterative steps of the cycle using Facebook as an example:
As mentioned in the previous point, the 4 ingredients (peer acceptance, random reward, fomo, and follower effect) play a huge role in the first and most important step. It triggers the cycle without any external stimulus to the user. I'm not logging in because someone messaged me or I want to check out a restaurant review, but for example, I'm logging in because I'm curious as hell whether or not I got a reaction to my post (random reward). I have no useful purpose for joining Facebook, I just check for reactions. The more times a user goes through this process, the more likely they are to use the product afterwards, driven by an inner urge, and thus develop a habit. The dangerous thing is that we as simple users can form habits without our conscious decision. For those who are interested in more information, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products , by Nir Eyal, for detailed information on the model.
Tricks that are not advertised
Department stores have also used tricks to fool shoppers: shiny floors, frequent rearrangements, staple foods at the back of the stores. To make you spend more money. Similar gimmicks are used by big tech companies in the virtual space to get us to spend more in their apps. Tristan Harris, a former Google employee and now an ethical software design activist, was one of the first to speak out publicly that tech companies should take responsibility for their products and make software that helps users spend their time well, supports them to focus and develop healthy relationships with technology. We are still a long way from that. Some examples from Harris' article:
Eye-catching colours - Notification colours on most social media sites are red. Facebook was the first to develop this feature, displaying new notifications in blue. No one used blue, and then when they changed the notification indicator color to red, the use of the feature took off at an amazing rate.
Here's the red where the red is. Since then, of course, most social media platforms have stopped trying to use any other colour.
Neverending News feeds - How do they cram extra content down our throats when we're no longer hungry? We scroll and scroll, but it never ends. Okay, I'll pull up one more for something interesting. Fear of missing out (FOMO), for example, is a powerful intrinsic motivator here to keep eating. In the news stream, it's hard to give in-depth attention to individual posts. Often we get so tired of scrolling that we haven't really delved into any post. It's a bottomless pit you can never reach the bottom of, but you keep trying. That way you stay in it much longer than you usually plan.
Auto-play - How else do you cram extra content down your throat? For example, by automatically starting to play the next content in line within a few seconds. You can see this on Netflix, but also on Youtube.
How many more videos have you watched than you wanted to because of this?
What are the consequences
There is no other utility in our lives today that we use so many times that the use has nothing to do with the actual purpose of the utility. How did we get here so quickly? By clever technologists cracking the code of habit formation, building on basic psychological needs, and being able to test the product live at astonishing speeds without disturbing users.
Credible experts and researchers on the subject, such as Tristan Harris, Adam Alter, Cal Newport, Nir Eyal, have taken the wraps off these tech players and revealed that in many cases the effects we experience on ourselves are deliberately designed to be so. We did not sign up for the digital life we live today.
The fact that we have become obsessed with these tools and software is not the result of our weakness or laziness, but rather the result of a massively profitable business.
It's part of a business plan cooked up in board rooms to serve the interests of a few technology investors.
But, what are the effects we feel on our skin every day?
Free time = Screen time
Your phone is the first thing you look at in the morning. But the first 20-30 minutes are critical for the brain to get the kind of impulses that give you a sense of calm. Instead, you could be stressing about an email from work 5 minutes after waking up, which could then take its toll on your whole day. Before and after work (maybe even during) you watch videos, TV shows, hang out on social media, instead of learning a language, playing a sport, playing an instrument, talking to someone in person, going on a trip, reading a good book, cooking a good meal, playing a board game, etc. And, of course, fall asleep on our phones or tablets.
Virtual connection does not equal real connections
We thought we could connect with 50-100 people online at once. But if you don't meet someone in person for a long time, keeping in touch only virtually, nothing can replace the richness that being in person brings. Therefore, relationships become superficial and give people the false illusion that they have a real relationship. But real, deep relationships require dedicated time and personal presence.
Emotional viruses - news feeds of fear
Why is it that in many countries where economic growth is stable, financial fears are growing? The short answer is: emotional viruses.It is a behavioural trait whereby we copy the emotional state of those around us.Thanks to the digital age and news feeds, these emotions can spread globally in an instant.Some emotions spread faster than others. A very good example of this was the Crown virus, which created a lot of fear and extreme uncertainty in people. This then generated global panic buying, false health data and fake news. It was impossible to avoid the 0-24 flood of news about deaths, infections, unemployment rates and the looming financial crisis. The spread of emotion was further exacerbated by availability bias, the cognitive bias whereby we attach much greater importance to events that are constantly right in front of us.
Self-evaluation problems
Am I sexy enough? Am I rich enough? Am I smart enough? These are questions we all ask ourselves, and the topic of whether I am good enough is the root of all these doubts. If our self-worth is not right, we can even become completely vulnerable to the likes and other reactions we receive to our posts, equating our worth with what comes back from our social profiles. I am only as valuable as the likes I get.
Continuous comparison
Better for you, worse for me? This is closely linked to self-evaluation. We are constantly comparing ourselves with people of similar status in our environment. There is nothing wrong with this in principle, it can provide a healthy motivation. The problem is that on these platforms sugarcoating goes on.
It's an illusory reality presented as cloudless, which leads to an interesting dynamic. If someone posts the "perfect" life on instagram, their friends can't miss it, so they try to show it too. They start outbidding each other and it becomes a self-exciting spiral from which there is no escape.
The focus is not on what I have achieved so far and how I am improving, but on how satisfied I am with my own circumstances, based on comparisons to other people's shop window life.
A game in which everyone loses. It can lead to a constant feeling of dissatisfaction. Incidentally, in psychology this phenomenon is called relative deprivation.
Focusing problems
The constant stream of notifications on our phones, the bottomless news feeds, the constant information overload, can distort our focus. The number of hours we spend in the virtual space every day has an incredible impact on our brains. Think about it, it's like spending 8-10 hours a day training your attention to jump around. There is no chance for your attention to be focused on a subject in a deep and relaxed way under these conditions. And all the context switching not only makes you less productive, it also makes you mentally exhausted.
With so much "training", the brain's functioning can't help but evolve. This has been proven by experiments of the American Psychological Association. Whether we're talking about a casual conversation with friends or an important work meeting, our attention span has become like that of an excitable, rebellious toddler who is impossible to keep busy. One of the most dangerous risks, which is the cause of more and more accidents, is that we are already pressing our phones while driving or crossing a zebra crossing. We are trying to pay attention everywhere, so we are not really paying attention anywhere.
Lack of meaningful listening
Without focus it is very difficult to listen to the other person. We are now hearing from several people that real deep conversations have become rare. To listen to the other person meaningfully, you need to be able to focus on them. To ask, to understand, to empathise. Instead, we listen to ourselves and everything else. That's how our relationships become more and more shallow.
Lack of deep presence
Not being able to really pay deep attention to anything or anyone leads to a superficial attention that has more serious consequences than just: ohhh, not much of an adventure, I should focus a bit more.
We are not present in our own lives.
Documenting experiences has become more important than living them.
Besides, when we're not uploading experiences to social media, we're under constant stress about which channel to look for you on. We can't let ourselves get into the conversation, task, or relaxation at hand, because there's always a part of us that's distracted in the meantime, wondering if there's something else more important and valuable that I might be missing. We don't live our lives to the depth that we could, and this superficially lived life is, I think, the most serious impact of the digital revolution on our lives.
Dopamine addiction
The speed with which we can access hyper-stimulating information today has degraded our ability to enjoy things that unfold slowly or require focused attention to such a degree that we have become unable to tolerate it. The chemistry of the brain is also altered, if it doesn't get its daily dose of dopamine, then cravings start to set in. The author has received a lot of feedback on the first articles in this series. Many of you said, okay, we read it, so what? What is the solution? We're so used to it that we'll take the solutions out of a short post and move on to the next experience. So there's pretty much nothing usually left over from these 5 tips to... articles. Reflection and brainstorming on a topic is an essential part of lasting development and learning, and the author has chosen not to try to cram all the clever stuff into a 5-minute blog post on this topic for the sake of deepening the impact.
We also forgot to be bored. When have you ever sat down for even 5 minutes to do nothing, really nothing? Yet studies show that our brains do some very important "de-fragmentation" during these periods. Silence and stillness are not appreciated. Our dopamine levels are causing us to call in more and more exciting stimuli.
The overall effect
When we talk to people about modern, digital life, the most common word we hear is exhaustion. It's not an app or a website per se that's problematic. The problem is the overall effect that all these fancy digital products have on us. Used together, they can amplify each other and make our lives in this digital world really exhausting.
How many of these effects have you noticed yourself? The author has encountered all of them in her own life. For me, the problem of focus was the strongest motivation to make a change, and so I started researching and experimenting on the topic on myself last fall.
No need to look for mistakes
Technological progress is a positive process in itself, and as much as it has come down to this, I am not demonising technology or big tech companies. The question is not whether technology is useful or not. It is about preserving our autonomy. A few years ago we subscribed to these services, we bought these devices, for the simple reason that we could keep in touch with our friends or send some important emails from our phones. Now, years later, anyone who looks honestly within themselves can see the huge influence these products have had over our lives. Taking control of how we spend our time, how we feel and how we behave.
Of greatest importance is the deepest intention with which these products are created and developed. If that intention is merely to make more money no matter what, it will not serve the long-term development of humanity. We believe that we are about to take an evolutionary leap. We believe in a future where business-driven organisations will also represent stakeholder value instead of shareholder value. Which means that they are aware of the impact of their products on customers, the environment and the global system, the deepest intentions are transformed and priorities shift from 'me doing well' to 'everyone doing well', even if it means less profit and no-brainer growth. The human side, social responsibility and the importance of sustainable living will be highlighted. And this will be quickly reflected in their products: instead of "how can I get users to spend more time in my app", the main motto will be "how can we best help users to live a balanced life". We are confident that the management of most tech giants will soon be able to make this paradigm shift in thinking. Until then, we as individuals need to take conscious control, draw our own boundaries and strive for a healthy tech/life balance in our lives. The author will also talk to you about digital minimalism, sustainable personal and workplace tech/life strategies. He will also talk about his own experiences over the last six months. But before that, in the next article, we'll look at the unhealthy practices that digitalisation has brought to our workplaces and why mindful work has become one of the rarest activities at work. As the educated French say, "See you next time!" :)
Source: István Liska: Focus is the new IQ - Part 4
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