I cannot live without technology today. This is me. I need to check emails, Facebook, Instagram, Quora, and feed my curious mind by some google search.
99% of us are in the same way. We are handicapped without tech no
Sure, It helps us to do a lot of tasks with minimum effort.
We work on it, we stream on it and it has become our closest buddy.
We are all on the same page here.
On the other hand, have you ever thought about how this buddy uses our psychological vulnerabilities? I observed my patterns for 3 months and came up with this list.
1. Manipulative Choices
I used to feel empowered by the choices I could choose from. But then I realized, I am choosing from the list of choices displayed in the menu of the application. Even though, we all feel like making our individual free choices, we are forced to take an option out of the list given.
There can be other great choices that are not listed on the menu. Those might be the best ones, but your choice is limited. Have you ever asked, “why am I given these choices and not others”?
Our perspective of what’s happening in the world is shaped by our newsfeed stories. Our relationships are guided by our list of contacts or friends on social media.
A person who is not on Facebook/Instagram is forced to get into these platforms to kindle relationships.
Along the same line, we often face with inconvenient choices in the digital space.
I have noticed that it is much easier for me to register/sign up for a newsletter or an app. On the other hand, it might be a bit hard to cancel the service.
Have you ever felt this way? It might take a minute to register for a service, but to cancel it we have to create a request to cancel and call in a number sent on our email. Businesses are making it easy to choose and hard to cancel.
2. Never-ending content
I remember using Instagram for 1.5 hours straight when initially I planned to check a few stories. If you notice, all social media platforms are built this way. We consume content even if we are not hungry anymore. We don’t get a chance to reconsider or leave unless our internet is slow.
Autoplay does the same thing, the next video starts after a countdown. It provides suggestions that it thinks we are interested in. And now we are hooked.
3. Instant Rewards
We are getting dopamine hits every time we get a notification. We get this reward each time someone likes, comments, or shares our content. Our elder generation thinks its easy these days for anyone to learn something. Even though this thought is ideally true, there is a major flaw when it comes to real life. It has become ever easy for us to get instant gratification.
There is no shortage of content you can access now. It requires extreme will power to focus on learning something. Our brain jumps for instant rewards rather than waiting for some reward in the future after learning stuff.
It is a superhuman task now to avoid interruptions and focus on the task at hand
If I have to write on how technology enables us to do great things, the post will be twice as this one.
But we cannot negate the fact of tech taking advantage of our psychological vulnerabilities. We cannot blame it on us. These products are designed by highly skilled engineers whose topmost priority is to make people spend maximum time in their platforms.
Time is our most valuable asset. By all these constant stimulations, We tend to skim through life without actually living it.
Being aware of the traps and flaws will help us make better choices.
That is the single most purpose of this article.