Curing smartphone addiction with an app
IN THE modern economy of tablets and apps, our attention has become the most valuable commodity. Tech companies have armies of behavioural researchers whose sole job is to apply principles like Skinner’s variable rewards to grab and hold our focus as often and long as possible.
But some people are starting to fight back. A small but growing number of behavioural scientists and former Silicon Valley developers have begun trying to counterprogram those news alerts, friend requests and updates crowding our waking hours.
Increasingly, the rebel developers are using fire to fight fire - creating apps that try to put users back in control. They call their movement “digital wellness,” and in recent weeks, they scored two huge victories when Google and Apple announced plans to incorporate some aspects of digital-wellness apps - like allowing users to track their screen time - into upcoming Android and iPhone operating systems.
“The system is built against us, because the more you use these products like Facebook and Google, the more money they make,” said Nick Fitz, a behavioural researcher at Duke University. “It’s like playing chess against a billion-dollar company. For every one of us trying to fix the attention economy, they have 20 researchers trying to suck you further into it.”
Fitz has wrestled for the past two years with one small corner of this emerging battlefield: annoying notifications.
In an experiment, he tracked the smartphone use of more than 200 people. Most received
I’m not saying that technology is inherently bad. But people should be conscious of how they’re using it and how it’s using them. – Nick Fitz, behavioural researcher at Duke University
between 65 to 80 notifications a day. When he eliminated their alerts, their stress levels dropped. A haze of inattention lifted. Their concentration improved.
But cutting off the updates also caused a spike of anxiety in most of his subjects, who reported feeling fears of missing out (FOMO in millennial speak).
So Fitz and a team of developers created an app to bundle those notifications and deliver them in three batches - morning, afternoon and evening. The people with the app on their phone reported lower stress, higher productivity and no spike in anxiety.
The 29-year-old researcher said his work was sparked by an epiphany in his life a few years ago. His father was visiting him at graduate school, and “I realised I was sitting there in the bathroom scrolling through Instagram, while my 78-year-old dad - who I only have so many years left with - was waiting for me outside,” he recalled.
Since then, Fitz has slowly unplugged from Facebook and Instagram and rarely uses them these days. On his web browser, he has installed an extension app called “Mortality” so that whenever he goes online, he is greeted by a black-and-white countdown of the days he has left to live (based on average life expectancy).
“I’m not saying that technology is inherently bad,” Fitz said. “But people should be conscious of how they’re using it and how it’s using them.”
Kevin Holesh has read the work of Eyal and other behavioural designers closely. As a web developer, he employed many of the same principles at previous start-ups.
Then five years ago, he found himself increasingly frustrated with the way he and his fiancee were spending their evenings. “We would spend all day working. At night, we’d spend dinner half-talking, half-catching up on things on our phone. Then, we’d turn on the TV and basically zone out in our separate worlds for the rest of the night,” he said.
He decided to create an app to fix what he felt was broken in his relationship with his iPhone and fiancee. He essentially took the core concepts of Eyal’s “Hooked” model and subverted them to create reverse hooks to lure users away from their technological cravings.
His Moment app works like a Fitbit, tracking the number of hours users spend on their phone and specific programs. It sends notifications after they’ve been on for an especially long stretch, suggesting a break. It also allows them to turn their usage into a game of sorts, challenging them to pick up their device less and less - until they feel like they’re back in control.
Moment is now one of the most successful digital wellness programs, downloaded 5.9 million times. — Washington Post.