Don’t get me wrong the smartphone is an amazing tool. I’d probably go so far as to put it right up there next to the wheel.
But if you’re anything like me, or the other billion smartphone-users out around the world today, your relationship with your phone has gone beyond just a tool to something far more intimate.
You love it.
When you’re not with it you miss it.
When you think about it you want to be with it.
You take it to bed.
This is because these companies do not have your best interest in mind.
(pic from pixabay)
So who are these supposedly evil tech firms? Primarily, Apple, Google and Facebook (including its Instagram and WhatsApp properties) as well as Twitter and Snap.
These are all stock market-listed companies and how they want you to use the ‘tools’ they create is entirely focussed on one thing: share price.
And this is driven by one thing more than any other. More than the number of ads they show and the revenue they generate, share prices are connected, fundamentally, to how much of your attention they can take from you.
They’re products are designed to get you addicted.
Many insiders from these companies, notably Tristan Harris formerly of google and Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, have voiced serious concern for the way these products are made and their intentions.
The bright colours, lights, sounds and unending streams of of content are all designed to give you constant little hits of dopamine, which your brain craves.
Here’s the thing people forget about Mark Zuckerberg, one of the leading experts in connecting our brains to the equivalent of digital crack. He wasn’t just a computer science dropout. He was a joint major in computer science and psychology.
The addictive technique these companies use are taken straight from slot machines. But these companies are deploying are aren’t targeting the over-18s gambling. They’re targeting kids and getting them hooked for life.
Another generation taking their phones to bed for the greater good of a tech companies’ share price.
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You can find my previous posts here:
When a bookshop is an oasis in a desert – Morocco travel diary #3
Rain in the desert - My Morocco travel diary #1
An ancient Greek historian and a hangover made me go to a deserted island
Introducing myself: Your local drunk Irish writer
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