In "Reclaiming Our (Real) Lives From Social Media" written by Nick Bilton, and Tristan Harris’ TED Talk, "How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day", both authors expose the main goal of social media, which is to attract attention by utilizing emotions, creating convenient features, and a subconscious schedule. Ultimately, today's society has become overly dependent on technology to a point where we mindlessly replace precious time with mindless scrolling.
Nick Bilton’s “Reclaiming Our (Real) Lives From Social Media” is about how social media doesn’t fulfill anything in life and how present-day humans “{are sucked] into a cacophony of links, videos and pictures that are constantly being dangled in [our] faces” (Bilton …show more content…
When working at Google, he learned about persuasive techniques the company deployed to grab people’s attention. One of which was the integration of convienient features. For example, both my niece and nephew are constantly on the iPad and laptop watching “the Wiggles” on YouTube and Netflix. Both video platforms adapted their websites and apps to automatically play the next video. The integration of this feature means that nobody needs to walk over the laptop to play the next episode. As a result, my sister and I do not know if the kids are watching their first or fifth episode. Although this feature does not directly attract our attention, it makes it effortless for people to lose track of time. When you watch Netflix while studying for a test, chances of studying efficiently are quite low. A show on Netflix is always more interesting than the atomic theory on your notebook. If the automatic play feature did not exist, you would probably notice that you’re going off track when the video ends. When the feature is on however, there wouldn’t be a stop until you finish the season or series, therefore wasting at least an hour of precious study …show more content…
In other words, what [Snapchat] just did is they gave two people something they don’t want to lose” (Harris 00:03:30-00:03:39). By giving people something they don’t want to lose, they will developpe a specific schedule to maintain that streak. By starting a “streak” we are now persistently checking Snapchat to keep the streak alive. Humans are now coexisting with phones and are now groomed by the constant notifications from social media to check it every 5 minutes. By having that habit, we have scheduled in the habit of procrastinating for “just 2 seconds” even though, we spend an exponentially longer time looking through our feeds. Harris said, “every new site … have to compete for one thing, which is our attention” (Harris 00:01:52-00:02:03). It is scary to realize that our feeds are all unique and catered to our interests, that is because the main goal of attracting our attention would be harder if everyone had the same feed. As a result, social media collects the things we like and share to give us a feed we want to see and will likely spend time
Nick Bilton’s “Reclaiming Our (Real) Lives From Social Media” is about how social media doesn’t fulfill anything in life and how present-day humans “{are sucked] into a cacophony of links, videos and pictures that are constantly being dangled in [our] faces” (Bilton …show more content…
When working at Google, he learned about persuasive techniques the company deployed to grab people’s attention. One of which was the integration of convienient features. For example, both my niece and nephew are constantly on the iPad and laptop watching “the Wiggles” on YouTube and Netflix. Both video platforms adapted their websites and apps to automatically play the next video. The integration of this feature means that nobody needs to walk over the laptop to play the next episode. As a result, my sister and I do not know if the kids are watching their first or fifth episode. Although this feature does not directly attract our attention, it makes it effortless for people to lose track of time. When you watch Netflix while studying for a test, chances of studying efficiently are quite low. A show on Netflix is always more interesting than the atomic theory on your notebook. If the automatic play feature did not exist, you would probably notice that you’re going off track when the video ends. When the feature is on however, there wouldn’t be a stop until you finish the season or series, therefore wasting at least an hour of precious study …show more content…
In other words, what [Snapchat] just did is they gave two people something they don’t want to lose” (Harris 00:03:30-00:03:39). By giving people something they don’t want to lose, they will developpe a specific schedule to maintain that streak. By starting a “streak” we are now persistently checking Snapchat to keep the streak alive. Humans are now coexisting with phones and are now groomed by the constant notifications from social media to check it every 5 minutes. By having that habit, we have scheduled in the habit of procrastinating for “just 2 seconds” even though, we spend an exponentially longer time looking through our feeds. Harris said, “every new site … have to compete for one thing, which is our attention” (Harris 00:01:52-00:02:03). It is scary to realize that our feeds are all unique and catered to our interests, that is because the main goal of attracting our attention would be harder if everyone had the same feed. As a result, social media collects the things we like and share to give us a feed we want to see and will likely spend time