Chapter 17 Distractions in the world
17.1 Smartphones
We get a lot out of our phones. Whether it is receiving likes on Instagram, seeing family updates on Facebook, chatting with friends on WhatsApp or Discord, or just reading the news, there is a constant stream of pleasant stimulation available to many of us. Thus, opening one of these apps can become strongly associated with a small feeling of reward. As the first president of Facebook put it, “It’s a social-validation feedback loop… Exactly the kind of thing a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” (Allen 2017). A stream of small rewards keep us coming back to the social media apps.
In 2003, a smartphone maker invented the push notification. Before then, you’d never know you had received a message or other update until you clicked on the associated app. But with the invention of the push notification, smartphone and other device developers added the capability for apps to pop up messages or sounds on your screen to indicate a new message. Later this was expanded to all sorts of updates, such as a “like” to one of your posts, or a share or retweets.
There was a tight association between these notifications and a small feeling of reward. This places the modern user of devices, then, in much the situation of those participating in the Le Pelley et al. (2015) experiment discussed in the previous chapter (16.5). When we are trying to concentrate on a task, a notification may pop up on our device. In part because of the association the notification has with reward, the notification is likely to distract us. Our performance on the task we are trying to concentrate on has been impaired. And that’s the situation even when we don’t click on the notification and go into the associated app.
Studies have shown that notifications and social media apps are very disruptive to people when they are trying to get things done. For that reason, psychologists and productivity gurus will tell you to turn off notifications in all your apps. Moreover, you should put your phone out of reach when you are working or studying or use an app to temporarily disable them if you have to use your phone. You can do the same thing on your computer - disable social media apps, Youtube, etc. with various programs that you can download to your computer.
At various times, I myself have found myself spending a lot of time on one social media site or app or another. It really helped to turn off all notifications to help me prioritise things. I still use social media, but now I’m the one controlling that rather than a tech company’s algorithm.
Well, not entirely. I still find myself going to social media over and over again, lured by the possibility that a comment or ‘like’ might be there waiting for me. That is, while turning off notifications has prevented some bottom-up distractions (visual stimuli) from pulling me into activating a time-wasting app, it hasn’t stopped my brain’s top-down drive from continuing to push me in that direction.
Why does my brain have this drive? Social media site designers have structured things such that one often gets a small reward as soon as one opens their app. They have managed to get other users to frequently provide a little bit of social validation (a ‘like’), or an interesting comment or post, that keeps me coming back for more, even if all the time I spend there doesn’t add up to much. I might have a better life if I spent that time on other things that don’t provide immediate small rewards, but provide a greater reward in the long run.