How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
Wow, I'm glad this was posted.I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s.Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem.For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happens to not be be necessary for Facebook to be a successful business.Go to a developer conference by one of the big tech companies, and speakers generally aren't talking about doing good things for the user. They'll use euphemisms like "increasing engagement". There's concepts like "permission priming", psychological tricks to get the user to do what you want. There's books written about how to maximize app addictiveness. It's stuff that mildly screws over the user, and it guides the product designs that affect the lives of billions of people. It's not good.