Silicon Valley tech companies intentionally design apps and social media platforms using psychological "brain hacking" techniques to create addictive user experiences, driven by a business model that prioritizes capturing user attention for profit.
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sixty minutes rewind have you ever
wondered if all those people you see
staring intently at their smartphones
nearly everywhere and at all times are
addicted to them according to a former
Google product manager you're about to
hear from Silicon Valley is engineering
your phone apps and social media to get
you hooked he's one of the few tech
insiders to publicly acknowledge that
the company is responsible for
programming your phones are working hard
to get you and your family to feel the
need to check in constantly some
programmers call it brain hacking and
the tech world would probably prefer you
didn't hear about it
but Tristan Harris openly questions the
long-term consequences of it all and we
think it's worth putting down your phone
to listen this thing is a slot machine
how's that a machine well every
time I check my phone I'm playing the
slot machine to see what did I get this
is one way to hijack people's mindset
create a habit to form a habit what you
do is you make it so when someone pulls
a lever sometimes they get a reward an
exciting reward and it turns out that
this design technique can be embedded
inside of all these products the rewards
Harris is talking about or a big part
what makes smart phones so appealing the
chance of getting likes on Facebook and
Instagram cute emojis and text messages
and new followers on Twitter there's a
whole playbook of techniques that get
used to get you using for the product
for as long as possible yeah what are
what kind of techniques are used so
snapchats the most popular messaging
service for teenagers and they invented
this feature called streaks which shows
the number of days in a row that you've
sent a message back and forth with
someone so now you can say well what's
the big deal here
well the problem is that kids feel like
well now I don't want to lose my streak
but it turns out that kids actually when
they go on vacation are so stressed
about their streak that they actually
give their password to like five other
kids to keep their streaks going on
their behalf and so you could ask when
these features are being designed are
they designed to most help people
of their life or their being designed
because they're best at hooking people
into using the product is is Silicon
Valley programming apps are they
programming people inadvertently whether
they want to or not they're shaping the
thoughts and feelings and actions of
people they are programming people they
oh there's always this narrative that
technology's neutral it's up to us to
choose how we use it this is just not
true technology's not neutral it's not
neutral they want you to use it in
particular ways and for long periods of
time because that's how they make their
money it's rare for a tech insider to be
so blunt Tristen Harris believes someone
needs to be a few years ago he was
living the Silicon Valley dream he
dropped out of a master's program at
Stanford University to start a software
company four years later Google bought
him out and hired him as a product manager
manager
it was while working there he started to
feel overwhelmed honestly I was just
bombarded in email and calendar
invitations and just the overload of
what it's like to work place like Google
I was asking when is all of this adding
up to like an actual benefit to my life
and I ended up making this presentation
it was kind of a manifesto and it
basically said you know look never
before in history have a handful of
people at a handful of technology
companies shaped how a billion people
think and feel every day with the
choices they make about these screens
his 144 page presentation argued that
the constant distractions of apps and
emails are weakening our relationships
to each other and destroying our kids
ability to focus it was widely read
inside Google and caught the eye of one
of the founders Larry Page but Harris
told us it didn't lead to any changes
and after three years he quit and it's
not because anyone is evil or has bad
intentions it's because the game is
getting attention at all costs and the
problem is it becomes this race to the
bottom of the brainstem where if I go
lower on the brainstem to get you you
know using my product I win but it
doesn't end up in the world we want to
live in we don't end up feeling good
about how
using all this you call this a race at
the bottom of the brainstem it's a race
to the most primitive emotions we have
fear anxiety loneliness all these things
absolutely and that that's again because
in the race for attention
I have to do whatever works it
absolutely wants one thing which is your
attention now he travels the country
trying to convince programmers and
anyone else who listen that the business
model of tech companies needs to change
he wants products designed to make the
best use of our time not just grab our
attention do you think parents
understand the complexities of what
their kids are dealing with when they're
dealing with their their phone dealing
with apps and social media no and I
think this is really important because
there's a narrative that oh I guess
they're just doing this like we used to
gossip on the phone but what this misses
is that your telephone in the 1970s
didn't have a thousand engineers on the
other side of the telephone who are
redesigning it to work with other
telephones and then updating the way
your telephone worked every day to be
more and more persuasive that was not
true in the 1970s
how many Silicon Valley insiders are
there speaking out like you are not that
many we reached out to the biggest tech
firms but none would speak on the record
and some didn't even return our phone
call most tech companies say their
priority is improving user experience
something they call engagement but they
remain secretive about what they do to
keep people glued to their screens so we
went to Venice California where the body
builders on the beach are being muscled
out by small companies that specialize
in what Ramsey Brown calls brain hacking
a computer programmer he now understands
how the brain works knows how to write
code that will get the brain to do
certain things
Ramsey Brown studied neuroscience before
co-founding dopamine labs a startup
crammed into a garage the company is
named after the dopamine molecule in our
brains that aids in the creation of
desire and pleasure Brown and his
colleagues write computer code for apps
used by fitness companies and financial
firms the programs are designed to
provoke a neurological response
you're trying to figure out how to get
people coming back when should I make
you feel a little extra awesome to get
you to come back into the app logger the
computer code he creates finds the best
moments to give you one of those rewards
which have no actual value but Brown
says trigger your brain to make you want
more for example on Instagram he told us
sometimes those likes come in a sudden
rush there's holding some of them back
for you to let you know later in a big
burst like hey here's the 30 likes we
didn't mention from a little while ago
so though all of a sudden you get a big
burst of Lights
yeah but why that moment there's some
algorithm somewhere that predicted hey
for this user right now who's
experimental subjects 7 9 B 3 and
experiment 231 we think we see an
improvement in his behavior if you give
it to him this bit in this burst instead
of that first when Brown says
experiments he's talking generally about
the millions of computer calculations
being used every moment by his company
and others to constantly tweak your
online experience and make you come back
for more you're a part of a controlled
set of experiments that are happening in
real time across you and millions of
other people
we're guinea pigs you're Kenny thinks
you were guinea pigs in the Box pushing
the button and sometimes getting likes
and they're doing this to keep you in
there the longer we look at our screams
the more data companies collect about us
and the more ads we see ad spending on
social media has doubled in just two
years - more than 30 1 billion dollars
you don't pay for Facebook advertisers
pay for Facebook you get to use it for
free because your eyeballs are what's
being sold there so that's a way to look
at that you're not the customer for face
you're not the customer you don't send a
check to Facebook but coca-cola does
brown says there's a reason text and
Facebook use it continue with scroll
because it's a proven way to keep you
searching longer you spend half your
time I face with the scoring to find one
good piece worth looking at it's
happening because they're engineered to
become addictive you're almost saying
like there's an addiction code yeah that
is the case the since we've figured out
to some extent how these pieces of the
brain that handle addiction are working
people have figured out how to juice
them further and how to bake that
information into apps dinner-table could
be a technology free zone while brown is
tapping into the power of dopamine
psychologist Larry Rowe
and his team at California State
University Dominguez Hills are
researching the effect technology has on
our anxiety levels looking at the impact
of Technology through the brain Rosen
told us when you put your phone down
your brain signals your adrenal gland to
produce a burst of a hormone called
cortisol which has an evolutionary
purpose cortisol triggers a
fight-or-flight response to danger
how does cortisol relate to a mobile
device a phone what we find is the
typical person checks their phone every
15 minutes or less and half of the time
they check their phone there's no alert
no notification it's coming from inside
their head telling them gee I haven't
checked in Facebook in a while I haven't
checked on this Twitter feed for a while
I wonder if somebody commented on my
Instagram post that then generates
cortisol and it starts to make you
anxious and eventually your goal is to
get rid of that anxiety so you check in
so the same hormone that made primitive
man anxious and hyper aware of his
surroundings to keep him from being
eaten by lions
is today compelling Rozen students and
all of us to continually peek at our
phones to relieve our anxiety when you
put the phone down you don't shut off
your brain you just put the phone down
can I be honest with you right now I
haven't paid attention what you're
saying because I just realized my phone
is right down by my right foot and I
haven't checked it in like 10 minutes
and it makes you anxious I'm a little
anxious yes we found out just how
anxious in this experiment conducted by
Rosen's research colleague Nancy Cheever
so the first thing I'm gonna do is apply
these electrodes to your fingers well I
watched a video a computer tracked my
new changes in my heart rate and
perspiration what I didn't know was that
Cheever was sending text messages to my
phone which was just out of reach every
time a text notification went off the
blue line spiked indicating anxiety
caused in part by the release of
cortisol oh that one is yeah that's a
huge spike right here and if you can
imagine what that's doing to your body
every time you get a text message you
you probably can't even feel it right
because it's it's such a it's a small
amount of arousal that's fascinating
their research suggests our phones are
keeping us
in a continual state of anxiety in which
the only antidote is the phone is it
known what the impact of all this
technology use is absolutely not
it's too soon this we're all part of
this big experiment what is this doing
to a young man for a teenager well
there's some projects going on where
they're they're actually scanning
teenagers brains over a 20-year period
I'm looking to see what kind of changes
they're finding the story will continue
here's the reality corporations and
creators of content have since the
beginning of time wanted to make their
content as engaging as possible
Gabe zickerman has worked with dozens of
companies including Apple and CBS to
make their online products more
irresistible he's best known in Silicon
Valley for his expertise and something
called gamification using techniques
from video games to insert fun and
competition into almost everything on
your smartphone so one of the
interesting things about gamification
and other engaging technologies is at
the same time as we can argue that the
neuroscience is being used to create
dependent behavior those same techniques
are being used to get people to workout
you know using their Fitbit so all of
these technologies all the techniques
for engagement can be used for good or
can be used for bad Zukerman is now
working on software called onward
designed to break users bad habits it'll
track a person's activity and can
recommend they do something else when
they're spending too much time online
I think creators have to be liberated to
make their content as good as possible
this idea that the idea that a tech
company is not going to try to make
their product as persuasive as engaging
as possible you're just saying that's
that's not going to happen
asking tech companies asking content
creators to be less good at what they do
feels like a ridiculous ask it feels
impossible and also it's very anti
capitalistic this isn't the system that
we live in Ramsay Brown and his garage
start up dopamine labs made a habit
breaking app as well it's called space
and it creates a 12 second delay what
Browne calls a moment of Zen before any
social media app launches in January he
tried to convince Apple to sell it in
their App Store and they rejected it
from the App Store because they told us
any app that would encourage people to
use other apps or their iPhone less was
unacceptable for distribution in the App
Store they actually said that to you
they said that to us they did not want
us to give out this thing that was going
to make people less stuck on their phones
phones you
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