One of the drug dealer’s iron rules is “Don’t get addicted to your own goods.” Worryingly, the attitude of today’s tech giants toward the products they themselves helped build and make accessible seems to have been similar. Legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Wired magazine editor Kris Anderson, and Twitter founder and medium Ivan Williams are just some of those who have imposed severe restrictions on their children’s recreational use of mobile devices. Did they know something we hadn’t discovered yet?
Like every new force in human history, technology brings with it a lot of blessing in the long run and a lot of damage in the short term. In the past two centuries, the first to set the wheels of revolution in motion have been the giant corporations, which are inherently blind to the moral value of technology, and interest in growth that will translate into a profit line for their shareholders. (Although, in parentheses, this assumption is already changing before our eyes, social responsibility and sustainability are seeping from customers to corporate leadership and becoming a significant consideration in their path) Meanwhile, until we learn about the dark sides of the Torah revolution and “domesticate” the new forces, prophecies of rage about the end of history and declarations of the rosy future await us if only we give the new developments a chance. This book tries to clean up the mess of opinions and separate facts from anxieties. Along the way, he takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the history of addictions, including one historical moment when Coca-Cola was accidentally created.
But wait, how can you indulge in something that isn’t material? What’s the addictive ingredient we’re talking about? Screen? The feed? The digital friendships? It turns out that just as we are prone to indulging in the influence of mind-altering substances, there is a side of us that may become addicted to behavior that brings with it relief of suffering or immediate and significant psychological reward. We owe this insight to one of the less-talked-about scandals of the unfortunate Vietnam War.
U.S. soldiers who were drafted into the war were far from home in difficult conditions and under almost constant stress, so it is no wonder that almost immediately they took advantage of the fact that heroin was available and cheap in the jungles of Vietnam. The locals arranged for a steady supply for a small fee, the drug, in turn, relieved mental stress and somewhat alleviated the horrific scenes imposed on them by the war. So it so happened that at the point in time when President Nixon decided to bring home his troops, he was horrified to learn that he was about to flood the United States with hundreds of thousands of heroin addicts. An unequivocal decision was made: No soldier sets foot on American soil until he has been rewarded and clean for a long time. To the astonishment of the caregivers who were sent to the temporary camps, the classic statistics of heroin addicts were literally reversed when it came to Vietnam veterans. 95% of heroin addicts who underwent rehab were likely to return to use within a short period of time, but among soldiers only 5% returned to use after returning to the United States! Two insights hit the scientific community slowly but forcefully – first, there is no such thing as an addict, we are all at risk of addiction given the right circumstances – the recruits came from all over the United States and from a variety of walks of life, yet addiction permeated equally among everyone. Second, the behavioral and environmental part of the soldiers’ addiction was many times more significant than the effect of the substance itself! So much so that when they were uprooted from the environment in which the addiction was acquired and returned to their homes and daily habits, they were weaned almost without exception.
Adam Alter is a marketing professor and an expert on the impact of seemingly negligible environmental details on our lives. For a living, he researches and publishes articles on things like: why women practicing law whose names are catchier become judges at higher rates, or why stocks whose names are easy to pronounce on the stock exchange show tens of percent higher returns in the first days after the IPO than stocks whose nicknames are difficult to pronounce, and more. For this he also wrote his first book, “Drunk Tank Pink”, which became a bestseller. Although the subject matter of the current book is different, his skills for extracting the right details and building an overall picture of reality, from them, are also evident in his search for the effects of technology. Its conclusion is complex and places the responsibility on both the creators of the technology and its users.
Mobile phones, smartwatches, social networks, games and popular apps are all not negative in themselves. The problem begins when the creators plan the reinforcement system and usage habits so that the end user will develop behavioral dependence that may even spill over into a real addiction. For this purpose, they use a fairly fixed formula: first you need to set simple and easy to achieve goals (think about publishing a post on Facebook, or completing a line in Candy Crush or his ancient great-grandfather – Tetris…) and then make sure that the user receives feedback as immediately as possible (hop! you start to stream likes, or alternatively the completed sequence disappears in a short colorful celebration), in addition as the user gains seniority – he must feel a sense of progress and challenge that increases the more time he spends inside the system. If all this is added to the ability to stimulate curiosity and provide meaning/social visibility for everyday use, then you have a prescription for the perfect addictive product!
The average time a Westerner spends interacting with a mobile phone screen is about three hours a day, almost half of the population in developed countries has developed a dependence on ‘something’, and in most cases that ‘something’ is a behavior related to the use of technology. The technological surge presents us with a challenge like human attention and habits have not yet met, with the challenge comes responsibility. What will we do with this incredible power embodied in technological development? Will we devote ourselves to the architects of change and their personal and corporate conscience, or will we take sides and set the boundaries ourselves? Either way, the road passes through the work of Adam Alter.
