This Is Your Brain on Facebook (The Consequences of Addictive App Design)

16 Dec 2016

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Games. Social media. Video streaming apps. ‘Clickbait’ news sites. I don’t know about everyone else, but I have spent way too many hours on these kinds of services.

In moderation, they can be informative, deeply social, and really fun! Games provide an immersive type of media unlike any other. Social media can connect us with loved ones all the way on the other side of the world. And good movies and shows can reveal deep truths about the human condition and information.

However, in the pursuit of capturing the ever-shrinking attention spans of users for increased market share and profits, we in the tech industry may have avoided thinking deeply about the consequences of such actions. The largest companies in these fields have studied the process of grabbing attention so well, they’ve got it down to a precise science. I don’t know how many times I’ve stopped to check the notifications on my phone or got distracted by some other site or app just while writing this essay. And though the rise of selfie culture allows for an unprecedented amount of self expression, it carries with it a significant pressure to embellish the stories, images, and videos we share of our lives. Social media can distort our view of the lives of others since it can conceal the negatives and provide unrealistic views of an idealized life.

In the end, this is as much a reminder to myself while creating apps for other people as it is a plea to the tech industry as a whole to think deeply about the consequences of creating addictive apps.