I’ve actually studied how developers make sure the apps we use are so addicting to us, as well as the science of habits in order to fix this issue for me. (Seriously. books are Hooked & Tiny Habits).Apparently for a habit to form there must be 3 things:
- Trigger (Getting activated in a specific context).
- Easy Action (Having the ability to do it).
- Rewarding Experience (Making sure it’s fun or we get an immediate reward / pain relief)
A trigger is something that prompts us to do the behavior. For example a phone ring prompts us to pick it up. This can be both external (phone ring), or internal (we feel bored). Easy Action means the easier it is to do the more likely we are to do it. And Rewarding Experience basically means it’s fun for us. That we get dopamine.
You feel bored? That’s your trigger to open social media (which is super easy to do), and the reward is immediate — You escape the pain of boredom. And after that you have endless feeds to take away from you the feeling of “finished”. Variable rewards (not all posts you see there are interesting even though the algorithm knows what you like, this is on purpose to create the slot machine effect).
So what can we do to stop this?
