It’s No Accident We’re Addicted to Our Devices

[rangerrebew]

It’s No Accident We’re Addicted to Our Devices

    June 4, 2017

by Robby Berman


There’s probably never been such a large population of addicts before. With our phones, tablets, and social media, we can’t look away for more than a few minutes at a time without feeling antsy. No meal is worth eating without an Instagram or Facebook snap, and couples text each other from different rooms in the same house, sending their messages up to satellites, around the world and back, just to travel a few yards. What’s wrong with us? Well, according to former Google product manager Tristan Harris, this didn’t just happen — programmers have been deliberately playing with the way our brains operate to turn us into addicts for some time. He calls it “race to the bottom of the brain stem.”

http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/its-no-accident-were-addicted-to-our-devices

[Oceander]

Ugh.  And very accurate (as I type this from my smartphone).

[Silver Pines]

Ugh.  And very accurate (as I type this from my smartphone).

@Oceander

"Harris says your phone is a slot machine that you can’t stop playing: “Well every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see, ‘What did I get?’” So, sometimes you win, sometimes not, but you have to keep playing."

Yep, that nails it.

[SZonian]

Electronic pacifiers...