Social Media Is Designed to be Addictive By Katherine Lightwood

Social Media Is Designed to be Addictive 

By Katherine Lightwood

A few days ago, I was sheepishly wandering into my classroom searching for an inspiration to write something for the blogs. I was asking every colleague of mine to tell me if they got any topics to write about. Usually, all my blogging topics were suggested by my wonderful colleague Praveen or by my teacher, but this time it was different. This time a very unusual topic was suggested by a colleague of mine Subho Halder. Well, the topic is not that unusual but the person who suggested this topic, that was unusual. anyways here's my thought. 

There's a  really common misconception that technology is neutral and it's up to us to choose how to use it. So, we are sitting there and scrolling and we find ourselves in this kind of warm hole and then we say 'oh man, I should really have more self-control'. And that's partially true, but what we forget when we talk about it that way is that there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen whose job it was to get my finger to do that the next time. And there's this whole playbook of techniques that they use to get us to keep using this software more.

So, was social media design always this manipulative? Well, let me tell you it wasn't always this way. In fact, back in 70's and early 80's, the way people talked about computers and what computers were supposed to be was thought to be a 'bicycle for our mind'.  Let's take a hypothetical situation, a human being with certain sets of capacities and capabilities. And then you give them a bicycle and they could go to all these new distances. They are empowered to go to this brand new places, to do these new things and have these capacities. And that's always been the philosophy of the people who make this kind of technology.

Now, when the first iPhone was introduced it was also the philosophy of the technology; how do we empower people to do something more. And in those days it wasn't manipulative because there was no competition for attention.

And in the beginning, the internet overall had been, not designed to maximize attention. It was just to put things out there, creating these message boards. It wasn't designed for the whole persuasive psychology that emerged later. What happened is that the attention economy and this race for attention got more and more competitive. And as more competitive it got to get people's attention on, let's say a fashion website, the more they need to get these design principles, more manipulative design techniques as ways of holding on to your attention.

So, that was my thought of the day. To see more posts like this make sure to visit our main page. And do not forget to visit our institute's page to know more about graphic design, 3D, animation courses and other awesome stuff. Till then good day to you.

Katherine Lightwood