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Chapter 1: What is 'dark flow' and how does it affect our screen time?
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, short wavers. Emily Kwong here with NPR alum, now independent science journalist, Mikeleen Ducloff. Hi, Mikeleen. Hi, Emily. I hear you have a new book out now about the science behind screen time.
I do. It's called Dopamine Kids. And in one part of it, I explore why so many of us, including myself, can't put down our darn phones.
It's awful. Yeah, I pick up my phone to do one thing and suddenly I'm on social media for 20 minutes.
I don't know how that happens. Yeah, for me, Emily, it feels like there's this kind of super glue on the phone holding me there. Turns out that feeling isn't accidental. Many apps are designed to do this.
And this has kind of come to light in the courts, too. There have been two landmark trials this year in which tech companies were found guilty of harming children through their apps. And specifically, the California case found Instagram owner Meta and Google's YouTube deliberately designed their apps to be addictive for kids.
Yeah, and the companies are appealing those verdicts. But scientists have already spent more than a decade identifying the exact features that tech companies use to keep us glued to apps for as long as possible. So, Emily, I have for you today the super glue recipe, as the anthropologist Natasha Dalshall puts it.
Things that keep us, you know, spending more time, spending more money, draining more of us and our energy and ourselves. What might literally prevent flourishing?
Yes, this is what social media addiction and like obsession sounds like. But these features, they have a surprising history, I hear.
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Chapter 2: What features do tech companies use to keep us scrolling?
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Okay, Michaelene, so this story begins in the casinos of Las Vegas. Take us back in time and explain what was happening there.
Yeah, so we're going to rewind 40 years ago, way back in the 1980s, when the casino industry underwent a massive transformation and created what many scientists think is the most addictive form of gambling ever. Oh, how did they do that? So they went around and ripped up nearly everything.
all the mechanical slot machines and all those green felt poker tables and replaced them all with digital versions of these games. So video-based slot machines, video-based poker machines, they did this because these machines were way cheaper to maintain But also they allowed the casino industry to add in all these extra features to them.
It's like they were apps before they were apps. The gambling games just played on screens. That's right.
They're like apps with giant touchscreens and these ergonomic chairs attached to them. Plus, they added all these things to capture your attention and hold you there, like lights, sounds, flashing images. So over the course of about 20 years, the industry gradually and purposely increased the addictiveness of these games by tweaking their features based on user feedback.
Wait, who gave the user feedback? The gamblers. The gamblers. The casinos essentially ran these large-scale experiments on all the millions of people gambling each year in Vegas. They tweaked the device a bit and then see if those changes increased the time people spent gambling. Then they just repeated the process for decades. So they were performing essentially massive A-B testing on gamblers.
Pretty much. And the result was truly extraordinary. The industry created devices that some people stay on for remarkable periods of time. 24 hours, 48 hours, uninterrupted.
Like they don't even stop to use the bathroom?
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Chapter 3: How did the gambling industry influence app design?
So she started to analyze the design of apps, social media, games in the same way.
You know, I could never have anticipated this. I think gambling offers a case study of what big tech does in a more general way. Michaelene, let's blow the cover off of this. What are the four ingredients in social media super glue?
Okay.
So the first ingredient is solitude. You use the app alone. It's just you and the screen. This is important because it removes social cues for stopping. When we use an app by ourselves, we have trouble noticing if we're actually enjoying what we're doing or even realizing when what we're doing is hurting us in some way. So you're saying it's the presence of other people that
helps pull us out of that machine zone state. That's right. And this, Emily, is real people, not virtual people. Studies have found that when kids use screens all alone in their bedroom, they're more likely to stay on the app even when it prevents them from going to sleep or interferes with their homework or friendships.
I've experienced this as an adult. Okay, what is the second ingredient to social media superglue?
It's what I call bottomlessness. There's just seemingly endless photos, endless videos, endless comments to read, endless levels to reach on games. And as Natasha points out, all this content appears automatically. There's no natural stopping point. So as you're scrolling, you may have a little thought in your head like, hmm, maybe I should go to sleep, right?
But then another outrageous video pops up in your feed.
I genuinely feel like I'm being baited like a fish. And that it's not totally within my control for some reason and I just have to keep watching. And I think it's because I just, there's this feeling of, well, if I just stick around, something else will happen. And I won't be totally satisfied if I leave now.
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Chapter 4: What are the four ingredients of social media super glue?
Me neither. So, Emily, can you guess what the fourth ingredient is? I'll give you a hint. AI is really good at it. Oh, you mean the algorithm. Yes. The fourth ingredient is a personalized algorithm and how it selects content for you. Yes, it does. Neuroscientist Jonathan Morrow studies addiction at the University of Michigan. He thinks this ingredient is probably the most important.
And he explained how it works. First, the app uses AI to determine what you want to see.
They know what you want. They're very good at figuring that out. But then this is key. They don't give it to you. They give you something close to that.
Then a few clicks later, the algorithm gives you something even closer.
Giving you what you want will get you off the app. They don't want that.
They don't want that. They want you to stay on the app as long as possible. All the features are designed to do that.
Exactly. So they sort of tease you in a way, right? Yeah, they're not trying to satisfy you. The app makes you feel like you're making progress or getting closer to your goal. Mateusz Gola is a neuroscientist at UCC in Diego. He says when people feel like they're making progress, they double down their effort and try harder.
When you see improvement, progress and so on, then you have a huge spike of dopamine telling you, oh, do it again and you will get it. Because in the real life, when we try again, this dopamine really motivates us to get closer, closer, closer and hit it.
So he's saying just a sense of progress, even if it's not true progress, motivates us to keep trying and to stick with the app because it's just enough. Yeah. There's always this possibility, right, of getting what you want. So the social media super glue recipe is as follows. Solitude, bottomlessness, speed, and teasing.
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Chapter 5: How does solitude contribute to social media addiction?
It's like your most euphoric state or something. Yeah, but these apps don't create that. These apps create dark flow. And that's where you're concentrating on an easy kind of mindless task. And you still feel deeply immersed in it, right? But afterwards, you often feel bad, right? Lethargic and maybe even gloomy. This is fascinating to me.
I didn't realize there were two types of flow. And... That social media is very good at the machine zombie one. Final question. Can we use this super glue recipe to fight back and pull ourselves away from these apps?
Absolutely. So, for example, our family was wasting way too much time on streaming apps, right? Streaming videos. So we put a bottom on the app and slowed it way down. How'd you do that? We canceled all of our subscriptions and now have to buy each video a la carte. I thought we'd end up spending way more money, but actually we saved so much money because we're really careful about what we watch.
Before we press play, we really think to ourselves, hmm, do I really want to spend $5.99 on this video? Wow. If we cut back on our movie watching, I'd say like a tenth. You never binge when you have to... pay for it each time. These are great. Any other tips? Yeah. So I have a bunch of tips in my book, but here's one that changed my life. Quit carrying your phone around your house.
But it's an appendage. What do we do without it? Yeah, so try it. When you come home, put your phone in a drawer near the door and leave it there. If you want to use it, go to the drawer, use it, and put it back. I guarantee you it'll change your life.
Michaeline Ducloff, thank you so much for sharing these fascinating insights into our phones and how we can, I don't know, get a bit of distance from them.
Oh, thank you so much, Emily.
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Chapter 6: What role does bottomlessness play in keeping users engaged?
Oh, and while you're at it, subscribe. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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