7 ms·

Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design

61 points by tacon 11y ago

Alex3917 11y ago
Also published recently on the same topic: https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-... (In fact the NYT article looks like it might be plagiarized from this.)
- indians_pro 11y ago
  this is better than the NYT article. i don't understand how it can consider regulation though, when the only currency onvolved is the user's attention, and they are their own federal reserves. does the web physically make us addicted, like cigarettes, to the point of unpleasantness when not indulging in the activity, or does it just form patterns pf behaviour that can be easily broken, provided one is _conscious_ of them?
- SmallBets 11y ago
  Thanks for this one, liked it more than the NYT. Was also interesting to learn where the game company "Machine Zone" (Game of War) got its name.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
Engineering addictive/compulsive usage is the highest achievement for any company as relates to their bottom line. Coke, Apple, FritoLay, Altria, Google etc... Literally every consumer focused company that is a leader in their market has gotten this down to a T and the ones with the most addicting properties among them, do the best.
- cma 11y ago
  Leading car companies?
  - majormajor 11y ago
    Status (probably not the best word for it) addiction? BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, etc... you'll find high rates of satisfaction, repeat business, etc, despite rather high rates of unreliable over-engineered components. It's more important to a lot of people to be driving a technologically advanced Tesla with great acceleration, or a differently-advanced sporty BMW that handles like a dream, rather than a more boring, more reliable car that just works. (Or, for a eco-friendly to eco-friendly comparison, the Tesla inspires much more devotion than other electric or hybrid vehicles.)
    - knughit 11y ago
      Tesla is Consumer Reports highest rated car ever.
      - dsfyu404ed 11y ago
        Just. Wait. IMO you don't know if a car is reliable until the kid created in the back seat is old enough to pick up his prom date in it. I'll also add that there's not a lot of people driving Teslas as their only vehicle year round in salt states and the typical owner is wealthy and can afford to take care of it. I'm not saying it's not reliable, just that we don't know yet and that they'll never get very hard treatment.
      - majormajor 11y ago
        Yes, the same Consumer Reports who later called them out for reliability: http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt-match-its-high-performance http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt...
    - cma 11y ago
      You're talking about a major purchase made once every 5+ years. Not exactly on the timescale of a compulsive loop.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    You use it everyday by default. In the case of cars they don't need to engineer it as it's baked in to what they do. Same goes for refrigerators, beds and homes. The bottom line is trying to get you to use something everyday.
selectodude 11y ago
"Please revisit using Google Chrome" no, that's okay.
chiefofgxbxl 11y ago
> "There’s nothing about a global computer network that necessitates addiction-like behaviours." I've recently reflected that despite the internet having origins which benefited the military and scientific community, the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. You see it as people endlessly scroll their Facebook feed, spending very little time even paying attention to the photos they are viewing. You see it in Snapchat, where users are encouraged to narcissistic-ly document their life every few seconds. It's on Imgur (granted, that's not too surprising), Buzzfeed, and clickbait (25 Unbelievable photos taken by a skydiver). I'm sold that if you want to make a successful app or website (based on number of users, not quality of content), it needs to revolve around users taking photos...
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. There are basically two kinds of Internet use that young people engage in -- hanging out with friends, and teaching themselves new skills. The vast majority of young people though are mostly using the Internet to hang out with friends. The exception is apparently affluent white males, who have much higher rates of using the Internet to explore new ideas and teach themselves new skills. This is called the 'participation gap.' (It's perhaps also partly why, for example, there are more male entrepreneurs even though women do better in formal education.) The important thing to note is that decisions about what to use the Internet for have a lot to do with who you are following in your social networks. E.g. this determines what new interests you're likely to discover, what opportunities are made available to you, etc. source: http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Conversation/dp/0745660711 http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...
  - rustynails 11y ago
    I know you mention that women do better in formal education. That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice. I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed. I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome. I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.
microcolonel 11y ago
Frankly I'm not sure how to feel about this line of thought. I safely avoid experiences like this and I don't see the appeal of Instagram. I imagine the feeling is much like eating snack food: you know you're eating too much, you have plenty, and nothing in the moment except shame will stop you from eating it. The answer is: don't buy snack food ever. Eat hearty meals and leave it at that. I take that approach to web/app content: read hearty texts, view great images. Switch it off when the quality dips below ambient levels.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- anthropomorph 11y ago
  So how do you manage your time on Hacker News? Even though this site teaches me things, it works a lot like a slot machine. Each pull of the lever has a small chance of dispensing a reward like a mildly interesting article. Not that different from reddit or buzzfeed. The difference mostly being the academic level of the reward.
  - microcolonel 11y ago
    I'm picky about the kinds of articles I read from HN. I admit that I responded in this thread because I figured the title itself insinuated a lot more than it should. I tend to opt not to read or participate in threads based on that though. General rules are: read the headline and the number of points for each item on the home page and the "new" page; if it's interesting pop it into a tab. If the quality of the article is mediocre or bad then it just gets closed. Then I don't come back for at least two hours. Not sure this is a great general strategy, I'd be interested to see what other people do.
qrendel 11y ago
One of the amusing parallels regarding Facebook (and similar products) is the way your likes, messages, and notifications, are basically like a little scoreboard, even in about the same location as old arcade games, and emphasized as strongly as anything else on the site - bright red against a similar shade of blue. It definitely contributes to that impulsive feeling I remember (prior to closing my account) to just keep checking. Similar to the worst psychological tactics and "reward-for-suffering" schemes employed by some game developers, e.g. Farmville, Curiosity, World of Warcraft, etc. It'd be nice to see gamification used for good rather than kinda-evil, but the potential users they alienate with these tactics are clearly a minority compared to the ones they manage to attract and keep hooked - or else they wouldn't have managed to stay successful products for as long as they have.
Falkon1313 11y ago
People tend to refresh the same feeds/groups/sites repeatedly, unthinkingly. Each of those has biases depending on the people who post there. Something useful to interrupt the unthinking refresh cycle would be an app or extension that analyzes group sentiments and occasionally signals "You've visited this site 3 times today. Would you like to try one of the following to see some different viewpoints on the same topics?" Probably not possible without privacy issues, but if opinions are already being tracked that way for advertising and surveillance purposes anyway, we could get some value out of it...
- juhq 11y ago
  This as a browser extension yes! I need this. I wish I could give you 1000 votes! Please make this happen, I can even help you with it!

61 points by tacon 11y ago

Also published recently on the same topic: https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-... (In fact the NYT article looks like it might be plagiarized from this.)

indians_pro 11y ago
this is better than the NYT article. i don't understand how it can consider regulation though, when the only currency onvolved is the user's attention, and they are their own federal reserves. does the web physically make us addicted, like cigarettes, to the point of unpleasantness when not indulging in the activity, or does it just form patterns pf behaviour that can be easily broken, provided one is _conscious_ of them?
SmallBets 11y ago
Thanks for this one, liked it more than the NYT. Was also interesting to learn where the game company "Machine Zone" (Game of War) got its name.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

Engineering addictive/compulsive usage is the highest achievement for any company as relates to their bottom line. Coke, Apple, FritoLay, Altria, Google etc... Literally every consumer focused company that is a leader in their market has gotten this down to a T and the ones with the most addicting properties among them, do the best.

cma 11y ago
Leading car companies?
- majormajor 11y ago
  Status (probably not the best word for it) addiction? BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, etc... you'll find high rates of satisfaction, repeat business, etc, despite rather high rates of unreliable over-engineered components. It's more important to a lot of people to be driving a technologically advanced Tesla with great acceleration, or a differently-advanced sporty BMW that handles like a dream, rather than a more boring, more reliable car that just works. (Or, for a eco-friendly to eco-friendly comparison, the Tesla inspires much more devotion than other electric or hybrid vehicles.)
  - knughit 11y ago
    Tesla is Consumer Reports highest rated car ever.
    - dsfyu404ed 11y ago
      Just. Wait. IMO you don't know if a car is reliable until the kid created in the back seat is old enough to pick up his prom date in it. I'll also add that there's not a lot of people driving Teslas as their only vehicle year round in salt states and the typical owner is wealthy and can afford to take care of it. I'm not saying it's not reliable, just that we don't know yet and that they'll never get very hard treatment.
    - majormajor 11y ago
      Yes, the same Consumer Reports who later called them out for reliability: http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt-match-its-high-performance http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt...
  - cma 11y ago
    You're talking about a major purchase made once every 5+ years. Not exactly on the timescale of a compulsive loop.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  You use it everyday by default. In the case of cars they don't need to engineer it as it's baked in to what they do. Same goes for refrigerators, beds and homes. The bottom line is trying to get you to use something everyday.

selectodude 11y ago

"Please revisit using Google Chrome" no, that's okay.

chiefofgxbxl 11y ago

> "There’s nothing about a global computer network that necessitates addiction-like behaviours." I've recently reflected that despite the internet having origins which benefited the military and scientific community, the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. You see it as people endlessly scroll their Facebook feed, spending very little time even paying attention to the photos they are viewing. You see it in Snapchat, where users are encouraged to narcissistic-ly document their life every few seconds. It's on Imgur (granted, that's not too surprising), Buzzfeed, and clickbait (25 Unbelievable photos taken by a skydiver). I'm sold that if you want to make a successful app or website (based on number of users, not quality of content), it needs to revolve around users taking photos...

Alex3917 11y ago
> the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. There are basically two kinds of Internet use that young people engage in -- hanging out with friends, and teaching themselves new skills. The vast majority of young people though are mostly using the Internet to hang out with friends. The exception is apparently affluent white males, who have much higher rates of using the Internet to explore new ideas and teach themselves new skills. This is called the 'participation gap.' (It's perhaps also partly why, for example, there are more male entrepreneurs even though women do better in formal education.) The important thing to note is that decisions about what to use the Internet for have a lot to do with who you are following in your social networks. E.g. this determines what new interests you're likely to discover, what opportunities are made available to you, etc. source: http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Conversation/dp/0745660711 http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...
- rustynails 11y ago
  I know you mention that women do better in formal education. That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice. I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed. I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome. I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.

microcolonel 11y ago

Frankly I'm not sure how to feel about this line of thought. I safely avoid experiences like this and I don't see the appeal of Instagram. I imagine the feeling is much like eating snack food: you know you're eating too much, you have plenty, and nothing in the moment except shame will stop you from eating it. The answer is: don't buy snack food ever. Eat hearty meals and leave it at that. I take that approach to web/app content: read hearty texts, view great images. Switch it off when the quality dips below ambient levels.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
anthropomorph 11y ago
So how do you manage your time on Hacker News? Even though this site teaches me things, it works a lot like a slot machine. Each pull of the lever has a small chance of dispensing a reward like a mildly interesting article. Not that different from reddit or buzzfeed. The difference mostly being the academic level of the reward.
- microcolonel 11y ago
  I'm picky about the kinds of articles I read from HN. I admit that I responded in this thread because I figured the title itself insinuated a lot more than it should. I tend to opt not to read or participate in threads based on that though. General rules are: read the headline and the number of points for each item on the home page and the "new" page; if it's interesting pop it into a tab. If the quality of the article is mediocre or bad then it just gets closed. Then I don't come back for at least two hours. Not sure this is a great general strategy, I'd be interested to see what other people do.

qrendel 11y ago

One of the amusing parallels regarding Facebook (and similar products) is the way your likes, messages, and notifications, are basically like a little scoreboard, even in about the same location as old arcade games, and emphasized as strongly as anything else on the site - bright red against a similar shade of blue. It definitely contributes to that impulsive feeling I remember (prior to closing my account) to just keep checking. Similar to the worst psychological tactics and "reward-for-suffering" schemes employed by some game developers, e.g. Farmville, Curiosity, World of Warcraft, etc. It'd be nice to see gamification used for good rather than kinda-evil, but the potential users they alienate with these tactics are clearly a minority compared to the ones they manage to attract and keep hooked - or else they wouldn't have managed to stay successful products for as long as they have.

Falkon1313 11y ago

People tend to refresh the same feeds/groups/sites repeatedly, unthinkingly. Each of those has biases depending on the people who post there. Something useful to interrupt the unthinking refresh cycle would be an app or extension that analyzes group sentiments and occasionally signals "You've visited this site 3 times today. Would you like to try one of the following to see some different viewpoints on the same topics?" Probably not possible without privacy issues, but if opinions are already being tracked that way for advertising and surveillance purposes anyway, we could get some value out of it...

juhq 11y ago
This as a browser extension yes! I need this. I wish I could give you 1000 votes! Please make this happen, I can even help you with it!