Persuasive Design

Why is tech so hard to regulate with our kids?

Why does it seem like our kids want to use screen technology SO much more than they want to do anything else? And what can we do about this when we as parents have such a hard time putting our own devices down? If it feels like everyone around you can’t stop staring at their screens, the first thing you need to know is that this is not an accident. Today’s devices are designed specifically and intentionally to take up as much of our time and attention as possible. Today’s tech is built using the principles of Persuasive Design.

Our Internal Reward System

The human brain has a built-in reward system that motivates us to crave, seek and repeat some activities way more than others. This is an ancient system, wired into our brains over 100,000 years ago during the Paleolithic Era, and it evolved to guide us toward behaviors that helped us survive. This reward system works by releasing a pleasure chemical called dopamine during certain activities. Dopamine is responsible for wanting, craving, seeking, and motivation. You can think of dopamine as the “I want more of that!” chemical.

If you want to get in touch with how your brain feels during a high-dopamine activity, take a bite of a chocolate bar or some crunchy bacon and notice how much you really, really want to take another bite. Then for contrast, try a low-dopamine activity. Go sweep your kitchen floor and notice how much you want to run next door and sweep your neighbor’s floor. Not so much, right? Food keeps us alive, sweeping floors does not.

In Paleolithic times, when our world was a place of scarcity, this reward system was nearly infallible. It guided us toward activities that kept us alive, like eating high-fat, high-calorie food, and seeking social approval, love and sex. Humans like pleasure. In the last several thousand years, with our incredible intelligence and ingenuity, we’ve created many non-survival-related ways to get a dopamine hit. Our modern world is no longer a place of scarcity but a cornucopia of high-reward activities that can hijack our dopamine. Today, our internal reward system can lead us astray, motivating us to seek and repeat behaviors that, if taken to excess, aren’t very healthy.

Here are some examples of modern, high-reward activities:

• highly-processed/sugary/fatty/salty foods
• alcohol
• drugs
• cigarettes
• caffeine
• porn
• shopping
• slot machines/gambling

All of these substances and behaviors light up our reward system, releasing the “I want more of that!” chemical.  You’ll notice that this happens to be a list of things that are well known to defeat human will power. In the last 20 years, we’ve added something else to this “hard to regulate” list:

•  Persuasive Design Technology

Our Internal Reward System Meets Persuasive Design Technology

Persuasive Design technology is the term used for technology that has been created specifically to light up the internal reward system in our brain. Technology like this is purposefully designed to make it as difficult as possible to put your device down and go do something else. In the early 2000’s, there was a class at Stanford University called The Persuasive Design Lab. In this class, the best and brightest young tech designers were taught everything we know about how our reward system shapes our motivations and behaviors and how to use this knowledge to create screen technology that was as irresistible as possible.

The homework assignments for this class produced Instagram as well as several other popular apps. In fact, the class’s professor, BJ Hogg, was nicknamed “The Millionaire Maker.” Once the rest of the tech industry saw the money pouring in, they all followed suit, and the era of high-dopamine Persuasive Design technology was born

Today’s video games, social media, Youtube, the gmail inbox, news feeds, dating apps, streaming platforms and your cell phone itself, all use aspects of Persuasive Design. Chances are, if your kids use a device, and it feels like a battle to regulate how much time they’re spending on it, you’re coming up against Persuasive Design.

Tristan Harris, one of those Stanford designers in the first wave of Persuasive Design explains it this way:

“There are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.”

Children are most susceptible to these new and addictive aspects of technology. That’s because the prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain responsible for self-control, delayed gratification and future planning) doesn’t fully develop until our mid-twenties. What we’ve been seeing for almost two decades now is our children’s underdeveloped self-control mechanisms pitted against thousands of the smartest tech designers in the world. It’s not a fair fight.

If it feels like you’re losing this fight in your house, please let go of any shame or guilt. Technology was sold to us as a convenient tool to make our lives easier, and to give our kids opportunities they’d never had before. This is all true, but no one told us about Persuasive Design.

Don’t Get High on Your Own Supply

A recurring pattern you’ll find is that the people who DID know about Persuasive Design, the tech moguls themselves, were some of the strictest parents when it came to technology and their own kids.

Bill Gates sure is strict on how his children use the very technology he helped bring to the masses. In a recent interview with the Mirror, the tech mogul said his children were not allowed to own their own cell phone until the age of 14.

“We often set a time after which there is no screen time, and in their case that helps them get to sleep at a reasonable hour,” he said. Gates added that the children are not allowed to have cellphones at the table, but are allowed to use them for homework or studying.

–excerpt from an interview with Bill Gates for the Mirror in London, by Emily Retter.

 

In late 2010, [Steve] Jobs told New York Times journalist Nick Bilton that his children had never used the iPad. “We limit how much technology our kids use in the home.” Bilton discovered that other tech giants imposed similar restrictions. Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired, enforced strict time limits on every device in his home, “because we have seen the dangers of technology first hand.” His five children were never allowed to use screens in their bedrooms.

Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium, bought hundreds of books for his two young sons, but refused to give them an iPad.

Walter Issacson, who ate dinner with the Jobs family while researching his biography of Steve Jobs, told Bilton that, “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices.”

It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply. ”

–excerpt from Adam Alter’s book Irresistible: The Rise Of Addictive Tech And The Business Of Keeping Us Hooked

Many people responsible for introducing Persuasive Design to technology have now come forward to express that it might not have been such a good idea.

Sean Parker, one of the earliest investors in Facebook has said this:

“…the thought process that went into building these applications, that thought was ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means we need to give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while. It’s a social validation feedback loop. It’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators, it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerburg] , it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram—understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

He went on to say,

“God knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Chamath Pulihapitiya, former Vice President of User growth at Facebook, now says this about social media:

“The short term, dopamine driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistrust…it’s eroding the core foundations of how people behave, by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years.”

When asked about his kids, he says: 

They “aren’t allowed to use that sh**.”

Cam Adair, a former gaming addict and founder of Game Quitters, says this:

“That’s why the gaming industry is booming. Video game companies don’t compete for just who makes a better video game, they compete for who gets and keeps your attention the longest. And then who monetizes it the best. Gaming teams are full of behavioral psychologists studying human behavior and optimizing their products for their own gain. It reminds us of a time in the sixties when Big Tobacco testified that cigarettes were not addictive while at the very same time attempting to maximize the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. For big tobacco it was nicotine, for gaming, it’s dopamine.”

Tony Fadwell, a co-inventor of the iPhone has said:

“I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world?”

Richard Freed (child and adolescent psychologist and author of “Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in the Digital Age”) when speaking to Chauvie Lieber for an article in Vox Tech Companies Use “Persuasive Design” to Get Us Hooked. Psychologists Say It’s Unethical. said this:

“The founding father of this research is B.J. Fogg, a behavioral scientist at Stanford University [where there’s a lab dedicated to this field]. Fogg has been called the “millionaire maker,” and he developed an entire field of study based off research that proved that with some simple techniques, tech can manipulate human behavior. His research is now the blueprint for tech companies who are developing products to keep consumers plugged in.

It’s actually quite simple, although studied at length, it is sophisticated. The formula is that in order to have behavioral change, you need motivation, ability, and triggers. In the case of social media, the motivation is people’s cravings for social connection; it can also be the fear of social rejection. For video games, it’s the desire to gain skills and accomplishments. Ability basically means making sure that the product is remarkably easy to use.

Finally, you add triggers, which keeps people coming back. So those videos you can’t look away from, the rewards you get inside an app when you use it longer, or the hidden treasure boxes in games once you reach a certain level — these are all triggers, put there as part of the persuasive design.”

It’s Not Your Fault

The reason technology use is so hard to regulate in your family today is not because there’s something wrong with your kids, and it’s not because there’s something wrong with your parenting. It’s because it was designed specifically to be as difficult as possible to put down and walk away from.

I think this is one of the most important and helpful things to know when figuring out how to regulate technology in your family. The way your kids respond to their screens is not an accident. They respond that way because of a purposeful exploitation of a vulnerability in the human brain.

Knowing the mechanisms behind why the people in your house have a hard time looking away from their screens makes it so much easier to come up with solutions to “Persuasive Design-Proof” your family.

I encourage you to learn as much as you can about Persuasive Design. Two great resources for this are the documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix and the book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter. If you want to learn more, you’ll find additional resources below.