Mobile App & Phone Addiction On The Rise

Mobile App & Phone Addiction On The Rise

Do you constantly check your smartphone to see if you’ve received messages or notifications on Facebook? Does your phone distract you from your studies or work? Do your friends, parents, children, or spouse complain that you are not giving them enough attention because of your phone? Well, if so, you may be addicted to your phone. It is estimated that the average Canadian teenager is on track to spend nearly a decade of their life staring at a smartphone, and that’s no accident, according to industry insiders who use artificial intelligence and neuroscience to help companies hook people with their apps. 


Can you share with us the  secret science behind cell phone addiction?

Well, most cell phone addiction might all come down to a single chemical in your brain called dopamine. Known as the chemical that gives us pleasure, many app designers are secretly saying that they design their apps for mobile devices to affect the level of dopamine in our brains. The more an app can increase the level of dopamine by providing habit-forming rewards the longer your eyeballs stay locked in an app increasing the chances of you purchasing updates or upgrades.

After talking with some of these app developers and companies it really looks like their mandate is not just designing software anymore, its designing minds.


How so?

So, one of the most popular techniques used in app design is called variable reinforcement or variable rewards.  It involves three steps: a trigger, an action and a reward. Here is a perfect example: A push notification, such as a message that someone has commented on your Facebook photo, is a trigger; opening the app is the action; and the reward could be a “like” or a “share” of a message you posted. Believe it or not, these rewards trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, making the user feel happy, possibly even euphoric.

And so, one little secret in the app industry is all about controlling when and how you give people that little burst of dopamine where you can get a person to go from using [the app] a couple times a week up to using it dozens of times a week.

If you think about it, rewards aren’t predictable. We don’t always get a like, a retweet or a share every time we check our phones but that unpredictability is what makes app or game compulsive.  And here is the kicker: app developers use artificial intelligence, which is essentially decision-making code, to predict the best time to make the payouts based on the user data they collect.

Take Snapchat for instance, has several features that motivate users to keep checking in.  

For example, the Snapchat score — a tally based on the photo messages a user sends and receives — is essentially a reward for being active on Snapchat. Teenagers can have scores into the millions. Snapchat’s streak feature is perfect example of app manipulation. It displays the number of days in a row a user snaps, or messages, a particular friend. The message could be as meaningless as a picture of a foot, yet the user feels they have an obligation to send it.  

The streak feature is a technique known as a loss aversion, which often involves trying to keep users fixated on an app even when it’s not useful or they don’t enjoy it anymore.


So, with so much thought, time, neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence gone into developing apps to keep users addicted, what are some side effects?

While it’s early days to know the full health impact, research is starting to show heavy technology use affects our overall well-being, including memory, concentration, moods, sleep, anxiety and depression.

So, based on a recent study in Ontario it showed that teens’ use of smartphones is on the rise, with 16 per cent spending five hours or more on social media per day. Many of the teens surveyed reported side-effects that include being less active, having a fear of missing out, anxiety, agitation, withdrawal and stress.


What’s the best solution here?

  1. Keep phones out of the bedroom.
  2. Enjoy tech-free family time, including dinner without devices.
  3. Parents should lead by example.
  4. Turn off notifications.
  5. Limit or remove the use of apps that have no creative or educational value.

thedigitalteacher

 

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