On Sunday, April 9th, CNN host and CBS correspondent Anderson Cooper presented the a piece on “60 Minutes” with the following lead in:
“What is ‘brain hacking’? Tech insiders on why you should care…”
In a culture that continues to buy into this idea that Facebook is somehow authentic conversation, Snapchat is an accurate picture of one’s life, and any of the above and other social media apps/sites qualify as any kind of listening or dialogue, we should care about “brain hacking.”
Cooper began: “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 are about to hear from, Silicon Valley is engineering your phone, apps and social media to get you hooked. He is one of the few tech insiders to publicly acknowledge that the companies 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.”
Cooper proceeds to interview Tristan Harris, who according to CBS, “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. It was while working there he started to feel overwhelmed.”
Said Harris: “Honestly, I was just bombarded in email and calendar invitations and just the overload of what it’s like to work at a place like Google. And 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.’”
Harris put together a 144-page presentation for Google execs arguing that the constant distractions of apps and emails are “weakening our relationships to each other” and “destroying our kids ability to focus.” With little change, Harris decided to quit three years later.
Again, said Harris: “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 we’re using all this stuff.”
Tristan Harris says the only thing the apps and sites and their developers want is our attention. The longer they hold our attention, the more money they make. (Question: know why texts and Facebook use a continuous scroll? It’s a proven way to keep us searching longer.)
Note that as Cooper’s report continues, one psychologist says that the typical person checks their phone every 15 minutes or less — and — “half of the time they check their phone there is no alert, no notification.” We are checking into Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. We are checking in on — and investing in — things that are not people.
Let me attempt to be more clear…
We are spending more and more time on our apps. We are often using them to connect with other people, thus potentially investing in relationship.
However, we are mistaking these connections for authentic communication.
We are mistaking status updates and opinion sharing as good, give-and-take dialogue.
And thus, we are mistaking social media for being a solid investment in other people.
Seems like we are doing a lot of mistaking.
As the tech industry prioritizes grabbing our attention, the reality is that such will pull our attention away from someone or something else. Hence, it’s not only our brains which are being hacked; it’s our relationships, too.
Respectfully…
AR