Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones
I've been following Tristan Harris's work since he released Time Well Spent. I think he has a legitimate complaint, but his proposed solutions are terrible. For example, he suggests to Facebook:<p>> Imagine we replace the Comment button with a Let’s Meet button. When we want to post something controversial, we can have the choice to say, “Hey let’s talk about this” in person, not online.<p>Why would Facebook, or any "attention seeking" Internet company for that matter, do this? You can even tell the interviewer is skeptical. If he had suggested, say, that we should take our business to consumer companies whose business models don't rely on attention grabbing, that would've at least been a start. Instead he suggests we "become more self-aware" and "transform design." Which consumers should become self-aware? Why would entrenched companies change their design? The idealism is nice and all, but so far I think this has been a wasted opportunity to fix a real problem. The messaging could be far more specific and realistic. But at least we're talking about it.