Michael Regilio

In fact, there were just two huge landmark cases against Meta and Google that exposed a ton of information there.

They are literally trying to drive behavioral change.

One of the most widely used frameworks for this is called the Fogg Behavioral Model, developed by BJ Fogg.

He's at Stanford.

His research sits underneath almost all social media design.

Yeah, exactly.

And the way the tech companies have worked it is teenagers are not staying on these apps because they are choosing to.

They're staying on the apps because the app manufacturers have made it frictionless.

Yes.

App designers make it harder to stop being on the app than it is to just continue being on the app.

You pointed out two of the big ones already, which is infinite scroll and autoplay, then add one tap likes, instant reactions.

pre-filled responses like lol and emojis and now they've all incorporated face id which removes the last barrier which is you don't even have to log in you just pick up your phone and you're in this completely highlights the difference between the internet and social media apps and when we talk about teenagers and screen time we are pretty much mostly talking about social media apps

Look, man, I'm happy to look in the mirror right now and say myself included.

The difference, though, between, say, your parents or even me is that our neural pathways were formed before infinite scrolling.

True.

So these kids today, they are developing their brains inside these systems while their brains are still young and malleable.

So that's what's so dangerous about what, unfortunately, your friend's system developed and what his students went on to then exploit with these social media apps.

And there's a step two to the fog model as well.

Reality loves irony, Jordan.

So step two, and this is where it gets pretty insidious, is the prompt.