Technology addiction
Introduction
Technology is the most crucial area of the industry. Technology is shaping the world today also making the path for the future generations (Gifford, 2013). It has become part and parcel of our daily lives. Cars, gyms, computers, phones, hospital equipment are just but a few examples of who technology has been incorporated into our daily lives which help people live comfortably. However, technology has very many negative effects on the lives of human beings(Kelly,2014). This paper will elaborate more on addiction as a negative impact of technology.
According to (“Essays – Tristan Harris”, 2018) technology hijacks people psychological vulnerabilities. In his article, Mr. Harris states his second hijack as “put a slot machine in a billion pockets.” A study by Qualtrica and Accel found out that millennials prefer digital communications and that they look at their phones 150 times a day. This is stated by Mr. Harris is due to the presence of an intermittent variable reward (Gifford, 2013). For all tech designers and developers to maximize addiction they need to link a variable reward with a user action. The rate of reward determines the level of addictiveness.
In comparison with other types of gambling, people get more addicted to slot machines three to four times faster(Russell & Cohn,2012).Mr. Harris is right to conclude that people don’t have phones anymore but slot machines in their pockets. This is because we look into our phones for any notifications, emails, we swipe on dating apps and also check for any social media notifications in this we all indulge in the slot machine play. Many apps and websites did not intend to make their apps or websites slot machines, it all was an accident. An accident that has led to many people being addicted to their phones.
Conclusion
Companies like Google and Apple have the ability to reduce this effect of technology by a conversation of the intermittent variable rewards into less addictive with better designs (Turkle,2017). Recently Google has put up some measures to curb addiction. These measures include “take a break” custom on YouTube and also YouTube will provide a summary of behavior. Android users will have app timers which will allow them to set the time they want to spend on a given application. This hopefully will help curb technology addiction.
References
Gifford, C. (2013). Technology. New York: Scholastic. Gifford, C. (2013). Technology. New York: Scholastic.
Kelly, K. (2014). What technology wants. New York: Penguin Books.
Russell, J., & Cohn, R. (2012). Is Google making us stupid?. [Place of publication not identified]: Book On Demand Ltd.
Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together. New York [etc.]: Basic Books.
Essays – Tristan Harris. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.tristanharris.com/essays/