Why Product Design should stop making people Hooked!

Are today’s individuals & families worried enough about the effect of Tech on their Health and Happiness?

There is a well-known saying “Drug dealer never consumes”! This is an awareness Post!!!

Effect of Tech on Their Health and Happiness?

WHY and HOW can be a Pretty mobile phone just on your hands can be the biggest Drug dealer of all-time!?

We Product Designers are the peoples who just like that Hack into the human brain without his permission and give all necessary information to your brain to make a decision slow and steady just like a seduction and also gives the reward to keep you coming back for more.

yeah!! we all have security permissions to apps to access which part of data on our mobile but most people don’t tend to see how the way you interact and data’s you shared will be used by the Machines to manipulate you into making a move that is already planned for

Here are the main insights from the Digital Wellbeing report. How does your family compare?

• Interest in Digital Wellbeing is on the rise, but digital families still don’t see technology as a top concern — not even in the top 3.
• Digital natives don’t see a distinction between online and offline life.
• 1 in 3 parents considers themselves addicted to their smartphones.
• A typical family member spends on average 3.5 hours connected to tech (screen time) per day.
• Nearly half of parents set time limits.
• Most families (approx. 80%) feel bad about their current relationship with technology.
• Parents are worried their kids will miss out on the tech-free childhood they grew up with.
• Younger parents are more likely to use parental control than older parents.

Source: Market study conducted together with Ipsos, 2019

Social media the Modern VIRTUAL DRUG

Social media addiction is having equivalent effect of smoking weed or taking opioids in microdose on an hourly basis 💊🍀

If you can trust me try hiding someone mobile for 24hours or put them into zen mode they will get restless equivalent to their past usage of mobile

Why do I call it a virtual drug !?

Mobile apps and social media is built on and by

1. Human interaction psychology
2. Hooked model (External or Internal Trigger / Action / Variable Reward / Investment to repeat the cycle)
3. Artificial algorithm to collect data and target data as per individual
4. Product designers use tricks and Military grade Psychology enhanced by massive technology to get ADDICTED to a product

What makes someone get addicted to somethings!!!!!!!!

We are talking about how to get a user ADDICTED to a product which is built by supercomputer, Designer’s, Architects, AI, and companies just get profited by Attention > Clicks > Reward

Humans are wired and controlled by …………

1. Sub Conscious(Subliminal thoughts)
2. Hormones – Dopamine & serotonin… They reward you for positive acts and also makes you fired up to do an important task which increases survival
3. Human Validation & acceptance (Millions of years humans lived by tribes small and medium scale, it’s always very important for a human to be accepted by their tribe and as many tribes around them as possible else we die, so our brain looks validation as live or death game till today
4. Human Engagement

ONE OF THE TWO MAIN TRICKS WE FALL IS,

RABBIT HOLE SCHEME & FISH HOOK MODEL

1. Rabbit hole scheme is when the user has the least intention to be in mobile either on Social media field, Reddit or YouTube. You see a small storey or a post as per a person's likes or reality…Eg, a Video of My most interacted actor’s /sportsperson is shown as u click on it and finish a 5min video the next video is linked to the same person as to its intruding and a favourite person of mine U watch it by the time if you break the content before completing. It completely. The algorithm. Shows you a new post as you like.
2. The fish hook model, is relatively the same but it’s so bad it a change a persons reality because same like a fish is caught by a hook…it worked on ideology like Trump vs Biden supporter or Is dating and hooking up rapidly is bad for culture and society ( yes / No )………Eg, Let’s assume you support modern dating rapid hookup and a one-night stand is fun and not bad for a person mental health well-being and society…it’s a catch you will be shown more information which supports this ideology and not the opposite of caring civilisation local and national culture and truth behind for a critical thinking

You get feed by data you like and make you feel your right not what right, you are fed by data what is liked and not what is right

Which gives rise to Narcissism and sociopathic behaviour because of the end product of having willing full blindness

Drilled down Social Media decrease human survival chance by 78%

Untracked Mobile / Social Media usage will lead to:

1. Addiction for validation
2. PTSD of constant anxiety of getting left out
3. Dopamine deficit state
4. Social dissonance / Cognitive dissonance
5. Induced social Narcissistic behaviour
6. Porn / unhealthy sexual addiction due to repeated triggers
7. Toxic relationship dynamics between couples and family’s
8. Influence syndrome – People get Botox implants to look like their idols
9. Body implants on females due to low confidence and misconception
10. Unhealthy diets and trends followed by misleading influencers

Think of a scenario you go to a party your favourite band is performing, you took ecstasy a drug increases your dopamine like 10x your happy harmony on the reserve is totally spent. The next morning you will feel like a dead body because the main hormone which is Gina make you feel great is drained totally. That’s called dopamine deficit state which causes Depression, Anxiety, Bad decisions harmful for mental health and interpersonal relationships, self-confidence

Physiology: Brain Chemistry Leaves Us Craving More “Likes”

Neuroscientists are studying the effects of social media on the brain and finding that positive interactions (such as someone liking your tweet) trigger the same kind of chemical reaction that is caused by gambling and recreational drugs.

According to an article by Harvard University researcher Trevor Haynes, when you get a social media notification, your brain sends a chemical messenger called dopamine along a reward pathway, which makes you feel good. Dopamine is associated with food, exercise, love, sex, gambling, drugs … and now, social media. Variable reward schedules up the ante; psychologist B.F. Skinner first described this in the 1930s. When rewards are delivered randomly (as with a slot machine or a positive interaction on social media), and checking for the reward is easy, the dopamine-triggering behaviour becomes a habit.

Why do we get lost on mobile feeds:

If you can answer why we play slot machine and gambling is the same phenomenon. Which keep us hooked into mobile

“ it’s the uncertainty of the outcome and finding the best wow or ahaha moment which fires your brain, you got limitlessly like practically infinite feeds and data’s and date’s to go with

Compare Facebook refresh vs gambling. Slot machine tripe. Both are gonna you same cognitive dissonance as a hallucination fell the end result is gonna be something great or rewarding…

The time between of action you pull the refresh & the lever on the slot machine both are exactly same

Netflix has a documentary on this called “ /the social dilemma”

Side Effects of Social Media on the Brain

Spending too much time on social media isn’t just a bad habit; it can have real consequences. Science shows that we are basically carrying around little dopamine stimulators in our pockets, so it’s not surprising that we’re constantly distracted by our phones. A TED video explains that social media makes us bad at multitasking and causes phantom vibration syndrome, which is when you feel like your phone is buzzing even though it’s not.

Just like a gambling or substance addiction, social media addiction involves broken reward pathways in our brains. Social media provides immediate rewards – in the form of attention from your network – for the minimal effort through a quick thumb tap. Therefore, the brain rewires itself, making you desire likes, retweets, emoji applause and so on. According to TED, five to 10 per cent of internet users are psychologically addicted and can’t control how much time they spend online. Brain scans of social media addicts are similar to those of drug-dependent brains: There is a clear change in the regions of the brain that control emotions, attention and decision making.

To make things worse, according to TED, the reward centres in our brains are most active when we’re talking about ourselves. In real life, people talk about themselves 30 to 40 per cent of the time; social media is all about showing off your life, so people talk about themselves a whopping 80 per cent of the time. When a person posts a picture and gets positive social feedback, it stimulates the brain to release dopamine, which again rewards that behaviour and perpetuates the social media habit.

Moderation Is Crucial

The science is clear: Too much social media can alter our brain chemistry. But there are also many good sides to social media; for example, we use these networks to stay in touch with friends and family and to connect to more people across the globe. Phys.org reports that social media is good for science communication, which is critical for getting research findings to shape public policy. As for what can be done to mitigate the negative, the University of Pennsylvania study suggests that limiting the amount of time spent on social media can reduce harmful psychological effects.

How to get out of this matrix or keep you in the check,..

Best practices are..

1. Don’t use mobile 60min before bedtime
2. Keep track of your app usage timing “Digital well-being” provided by Android OS by default Apple provides Screen time to regulate app usage
3. Use Focus mode” you will be forced to close the app after a particular time limit.
4. Take repeated breaks like min 3 to 6 days away from social media to detox attachments and brain trigger
5. Have some hobby to move around without devices like guitar, music instrument or sports
6. Exercise and train your mind daily as it regulates your hormone balance and increases dopamine and serotonin levels
7. Have regular interaction on physical presence or on-call with a person who really matters on regular basis, then social media friends and followers
8. Monitor kids screen time as equals to sugar or drug consumption and monitor the data that has been consumed and filter any hate-red or misleading data or trends and report if needed
9. Mute unwanted notification to not get distracted by unwanted fishing by apps to check the app to see more data
10. Have a limited time on a daily basis to be spent on mobile

Mobile Phones. can be better and constructive things like the podcast, expanding business, cabs, having access to a huge database of information at the same time it can be equally dangerous…

Author note:

If you are a product designer, I urge you to design your application and digital solutions with more social responsibility than profit and User Experience and add user well-being score to the Mobile app or web app during testing to make sure users have enough access to settings on how to be hooked into the application and have access to data and warning them of the bad behaviour like spending more time or unhealthy usage of apps will increase the user experience with our responsibility of their mental state too

-Thanks.

In my personal experience of designing multiple websites and mobile app’s we have two things in mind Profit and repeatable behaviour or hooked behaviour with the best UX and UI

Ended up catching myself to be away from this very long and planned to use all social media and data provider in excess like a normal person and experienced how it disturbs my work and relationships dynamics as I could see and fell in crystal clear what and why it’s happening or shown, I put me into rigorous healthy screen timing into social media and classify business and personal apps and mute them according to timely basis and till today I use my social media apps on focus mode. Where it closes in 5min and I can either increase it by 5 more min or exit.