Are you being targeted by Big Tech Companies to stay on your phone more?
Almost everyone, including yours truly, has access to a touch screen phone nowadays and uses it daily, whether it be to wake up in the morning, to talk to people, or to kill time, but in recent years there has been a significant increase in the amount of time spent on screens. With our rapidly developing technology this is only going to speed up. This epidemic is leading to a raised risk of mental diseases, physical changes to your brain, and less logical thinking. You might ask what is causing this eruption? Well a major part of it is companies purposefully attempting to increase screen time through the use of techniques hidden in plain sight and shady or subconscious tactics. To elaborate, these big tech companies are deliberately designing their software to encourage people to stay locked to their screens, they do this to increase the number of views each advertisement gets to increase their revenue. As the New York Post stated, “Advertisers are the consumer; users are merely the product”, in layman terms it means advertisers are profiting through the screen time of the unknowing users (Schweppe 1).The reason I chose this topic was to bring awareness to the screen addiction we all face, not just children, but adults as well. The raised times that we are spending on screens is detrimental to our wellbeing, thus we should be well informed and attempt to limit or reduce screen time.
According to Yatan Pal Singh Balhara, the term screen addiction“is used to describe the engagement with a variety of screen activities in a dependent, problematic manner”, which in a nutshell means the average person is negatively affected by their daily reliance on screens (Balhara, 1). In addition to this, screen addiction can be defined as repetitively choosing to spend time on a screen even though it’s unnecessary, we all have fallen victim to screen addiction without knowing it. Victoria L. Dunckley, a child psychiatrist, explained some of the disturbing effects of excessive screen time and what it can do to the brain. Children especially are victims to the harsh tendencies of spending too much time on screens, because their brains are still developing. Through mental observation of her patients she recorded that many of her patients “suffer from sensory overload, lack of restorative sleep, and a hyper aroused nervous system” leading to the children being moody and show signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Dunckley 1). Though it may not seem like much but each subsequent “hour of viewing increases the likelihood of experiencing socio-emotional problems”, overtime the time spent rises creating the addiction. In an interview by CBS with a former google design employee, Triston Harris, and James Styer, the founder of common sense media, both advocates that parents and children get educated about the addictive qualities of cell phones and other media. As said by James Styer that device addiction is “changing the nature of interpersonal relationships”, leading me to agree with his statement since it can be backed up by Dunckley’s work. Through physical scans of the brains of addicted kids, it portrays “gray matter atrophy” or the loss of tissue volume which controls higher thinking processes such as planning and organizing, so it physically makes you dumber (Dunckley 1). As a person who had spent most of my time on a screen, either gaming or watching television, this information caused me to change my own lifestyle and spend more time outside sports and I hope it does the same for others. But nonetheless, we as a society spend countless hours on our phones, without noticing that we fell into the traps set by companies to retain our attention.
Big tech companies deliberately design their products and software to contain traps “that will keep users on the hamster wheel as long as possible”, going as far as even hiring “psychologists and neurologists do develop addictive techniques (Schweppe 1). Are you ever just sitting waiting for a bus or train and decide to use your phone and get stuck in an infinite scroll? Or are you ever watching a youtube video and auto play plays the next video? Steaks in a videogame or social media app? These are just some of the tactics that seem harmless but are techniques hidden in plain sight that attempt to keep the audience glued to their screens. Corporations mainly target teenagers and adults who are tech savvy; this is done through many different ways from simple design choices all the way to creating a personalized profile per individual. As a tech savvy person I experience this first hand, but even though the intentions of these are debatable, they still have a tendency to collect private information through cookies and algorithms. When a website says they use cookies, they are referring to the virtual ones, which are bytes of information that store some of your information and have many uses from remember login details to remember your history. This acquisition of information recently has been in the news due to Facebook’s scandals of selling user information, leading many corporations to send out updated terms of service agreements. There are many types of algorithms others than one that recommend products and interests, such as simple learning algorithms for games. Most are beneficial to society from Google Maps giving you routes all the way to creative AI in your camera to help picture look better. But in the end algorithms are another way an establishment can increase your screen time, for example some algorithms can take previous searches and wish lists into account. Paul Hood, the head of Trinity mirror (A newspaper and magazine company), stated “The implementation of the recommendations software lets us automatically present related products from the ecommerce range at the right time, and the initial results are positive,” depicting how companies are actually benefiting (Lovett 1). For instance, let us say that you are planning on buying a gym membership and you search up the cost, later while on a separate page about cats you are recommended that search, that is algorithm in play. A well known company that uses algorithms to psychologically target an audience is Facebook, since the AI “constantly shows an effect of Psychological matching”(Matz 1). During my research I also discovered that Facebook’s algorithm targets people based on “geo-demographic” and “personality,” so a person is more likely to find a reason to spend more time on the site (Matz 1). Hood also reveals that his company has “profiled more than 200,000 people using VisualDNA in the last three months, and it means we can personalize both content and ads and trace the users as they come back to the site” (Lovett 1). In my research websites are not the only companies who are collecting user information, but the internet and television service providers as well. When you subscribe to a service such as Netflix, your information is collected, so they can send you targeted ads “according to demographics, income, marital status, etc making adverts even more relevant” (Campaign Middle East ).
Even though we are in a technological era we still need human interaction to maintain a society that has good mental health. Some may argue that without social media kids find it harder to communicate with each other and argue parents should stop worrying so much since pediatricians say it does no harm to you children. But as stated before there are countless studies that “Excessive screen time is as an important and independent risk factor for health” (Balhara 1). A very particular case though not average, portrays the extent of what excessive screen time can do to you, a young man in India started watching tv-shows on his free time. Over time his grades began to slip and within the end of his first year of college he was only watching tv-shows full time and avoiding society and his family. Yes social media does bring us closer to everyone, but on the other side of the coin it distances us from real human interaction leading to more depressed and moody people (Balhara 1).
Before you grab your pitchforks and torches, I am not saying all companies are inherently immoral or that screens will be the end of the human race, but we still can not deny the impact of screens on society. Some big companies that do not profit from these advertisements are attempting to help decrease the time spent on screens, such as Apple, who is allowing their users to limit their screen time and decrease the amount of notifications. During CBS’s interview with James Styer and Triston harris, Triston mention some ways to repair some of the damage done from screen addiction, such as how you can “set your phone to grayscale”, which eliminates the colors that grab you attention without missing anything that’s important, less stimulation leads to a less enticing phone. Another way we can limit our interactions with advertisements to decrease screen time is be cautious of your location, in my research it was apparent to me how bigger companies use expensive hardware to send targeted ads using location. In the video How Internet Advertisers Read Your Mind by the Bright side (A Youtube Channel that has over 30 million subscribers), elaborates that you phone has a unique identification that can be used by such hardware, this is known as “geo-tags” (Bright Side 1). Anyone that has used a public wifi, such as the free transit wifi, has already been a victim to these tags. Even though they do not collect private information, they will send you offers related to the area the wireless network is located in. Now, I am pretty sure everyone is slightly suspicious of their phones and question if it is listening to us all the time. Not surprisingly, the answer is yes, many apps that have access to the microphone are constantly listening to our conversations, this is more relevant now more than ever since Amazon and Google are launching their home assistants. These devices without using their microphone without permission of the owners, this could be because of they listen for voice commands that they need to activate them selves. If you are using any “social media at all, you are already being tracked”, since they use your camera and microphone for recording videos and taking pictures (Bright Side). Certain voice commands such as “Hey Siri” and “Okay google” are triggers for phone to start listening, but for other apps such as “Facebook, no one knows what the triggers are” (Nichols 1). This can explain many phenomena which occur without the interaction of a phone, such as verbally saying you are searching for a new house and later getting ads on greats websites for finding a new apartment. On the topic of social media, parents assume that its “part of our kids’ culture,” that it is what all the kids are doing but fail to realize that they too are addicted (Dunckley 1). During the interview with James Styer and Triston Harris, a simple survey study was conducted to find out whether teenagers and parents find it urgent to respond to a notification, roughly 78% of teenagers and 69% of adults felt like it was necessary to respond instantly and check their phones hourly. To resolve this what I personally do is avoid social media and deny apps access to my camera microphone, if you want to continue using social media you can make it so apps, on launch, must always ask to use your phones accessories. In an attempt to reduce the insane screen times Senator Josh Hawley passed “the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology, or SMART Act” which would stop companies from using manipulative techniques to retain an audience (Schweppe 1). This act also allows users an “equal opportunity to either give or decline consent to particular user experience”, but Big Tech companies still look for ways around this such as hiding privacy options that the user can still find through a decent search.
To wrap everything up, screen addiction has been increasing along with technology, and we should start to limit it. All rewards systems in games and social media apps for logging on every day release dopamine which is very similar to a drug craving, every now and they the user would depict withdraw. When I was a kid in highschool I expressed these outbursts with screen addiction, playing video games and was not in the best standing with my family, but through reducing my screen time recovered. So the youth in particular are vulnerable to health issues caused by screen addiction since their brains have not fully developed yet, this can lead to permanent damage to the frontal lobe which “determines success in every area of life” including “academic or career success”. Companies that make money off these users do not care for their well being as long as they are making money. People always have been attempting to reduce their screen addiction, so now I challenge you as the reader to determine where you stand, what will you do?
Source Summary
Bright Side, How internet Advertisers Read your mind, 2019, Video
Summary
Visually depicts how advertisers track your data as well as provide ads, prime example was a Pan that depicts how certain companies attempt to retain your attention by watching your actions.
Dunckley Victoria L. M.D., Gray matters: too much screen time damages the brain, 2014, PsychologyToday
Summary
Dunckley explains the negative effects of screen addiction at a young age. Helps explain how urgent this situation is since it physically makes you dumber.
Campaign Middle East, Are targeted ads the future?, 2012, Article
Summary
Internet providers are able to create a special set of ads per family based on the history of the user. They take into fact the information of the subscriber from the income to the marital status of the person.
CBS This Morning, “Truth about tech”; Device addiction “happening by design”, 2018, Youtube interview
Summary
Two expertes are attempting to change the way we design advertisements and phone user interfaces to decrease the time people want to feel attracted to our screens. The two experts tackle the big tech companies asking for change, Apple responds with features of decreases notifications.
Koebler Jason, Your phones are listening and it’s not paranoia, 2018, Vice
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjbzzy/your-phone-is-listening-and-its-not-paranoia
Summary
Sam Nicholas explains why we get coincidental ads when we say we need something such as a pot, house or phone. This helps explains how our phones are constantly listening to our conversation.
Lovett, Gina, Mirror Football trials targeting software to recommend products, 2010, Article
Summary
In this article Lovett explains the targeting software created by Mirror Football to recommend products on editorials users are viewing, following users around. The head of Trinity Mirror, Paul Hood, said “produced from the ecommerce range at the right time, and the initial results are positive”, by which he means the software is successful in completing its task of advertising products from the Mirror Football Shop to its consumers. They also profiled more than 200,000 people in hopes to personalize both content and ads while tracing the users as they leave and come back to the website. Companies admit to using this technique and use private information to have a strong base.
Schweppe, John, Big Tech is using psychology to glue us to our screens, 2019, Newspaper
https://nypost.com/2019/08/13/big-tech-is-using-psychology-to-glue-us-to-our-screens/
Summary
Big tech Companies are using psychologist and neurologist to create addictive strategies that keep users hooked on the sight for longer, increasing their revenue through the advertisements on pages, to the company the user is “merely the product”. Simple things such as the infinite scroll or autoplay are prime examples of how advertisers increase screen time, even the Skip ad button gets you to watch at least 5 seconds of an ad, since they are deliberately seek out addictive features that make it harder to leave the page/app. They all have a common trait they appeal to the user’s desires to demonstrate loyalty.
S.C., Matz, Facebook’s optimization algorithms are highly unlikely to explain the effects of psychological targeting, 2018, Article
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6003367/
Summary
In this article it observes and explains Facebook’s targeting algorithm to recommend ads to a certain targeted audience, also known as Psychological targeting. It is said the the algorithm bases recommendations based on different geo-demographics, so it was concluded that certain audiences are targeted psychologically. This was very relatable to my question since it depicts the algorithm matching people’s information to recommend certain advertisements to increase the length of time they spend on the site.
Yatan Pal Singh Balhara, Kamini Verma and Rachna Bhargava, Screen time and screen addiction: Beyond gaming, social media and pornography– A case report, 2018, Clinical Key
