How I Overcame My Tech Addiction
In the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, tech experts explain the deliberately addictive nature of social networking and smartphones. Like stage magicians, these technologies exploit the weaknesses in the evolutionary features of our minds. Magicians’ tricks succeed by taking advantage of our shared blind spots. Similarly, tech companies target the flaws of the human mind to affect the attention and actions of billions of people. These companies are incentivized to do this because they make money from showing us ads, so it pays them to keep us addicted. We spend more time on their platforms and give them our data so they can serve more customized and profitable ads.
Why We Become Addicted To Tech
How do they keep us addicted? They rely on dopamine—the “reward hormone.” Like Pavlov’s dogs, we anticipate a reward when we hear something associated with it, like a notification sound, and respond accordingly. Dopamine levels can be twice as high when anticipating a reward as when actually receiving it. And dopamine is involved in our ability to focus, plan ahead and decide on actions. So controlling our dopamine means controlling our behavior.
Psychologist B.F. Skinner showed that unpredictable rewards are more addictive than predictable ones. He gave mice treats for pressing levers, and the ones who sometimes got a bigger treat and sometimes got no treat at all pressed the levers more compulsively than the ones who got the same treat every time.
Predictable rewards build tolerance; the brain releases dopamine for unexpected rewards. The link to smartphone games and slot machines is evident. Compulsively checking for new messages is also an example of this effect: Sometimes there aren’t any, and sometimes there’s a particularly exciting one.
Many games use cycles of engagement and reward (often variable reward) to create addiction and habit-forming behavior. Nongaming apps use gamification to tap into this too (consider Duolingo’s streaks or the challenges and leagues in fitness apps).
Other cognitive biases these apps exploit include FOMO (fear of missing out) and loss aversion. You have to keep playing regularly or you’ll lose your gems and saved progress!
Tech companies also learn from user behavior: They observe where users leave the app so they can shore up those parts and make them more addictive, and they use your data to segment their audience and find out which tricks work best on people like you.
Overcoming Tech Addiction
Everyone can benefit from applying the principles of modern therapeutic approaches such as CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to observe the links between emotions, thoughts and behavior—and interrupt and control them. By taking control of these processes, you can rewire the connections in your brain from serving the purposes of your evolutionary ancestors—or the tech companies—to serving yours.
According to CBT, our brains follow a cognitive program: External input → emotional reaction → thoughts → behavior. If you want to change a behavior—like tech addiction—you need to address the inputs, emotions and thoughts that lead to it.
Here’s an example: I don’t have any social plans this weekend (input) → I feel sad and lonely (emotion) → This is because no one likes me and I’m boring (thought) → To escape these feelings and thoughts, I’ll binge social media or video games (behavior).
Identify The Emotions That Lead To Tech Addiction Behaviors
To break this cycle and regain control, try to notice what emotions precede the unwanted behavior. Keeping a systematic log can help with this.
We usually fall unconsciously into an addictive behavior to avoid confronting an emotion. The emotions can be very diverse, such as boredom, sadness, anxiety, anger, fear, frustration and stress. For example, my social media cravings mainly arose in the mornings before work and were worse if I’d have to interact with people that day, especially if I had to speak to a large crowd. So I identified my emotion as social anxiety.
Sometimes, simply labeling an emotion is enough to disarm it and allow your rational brain to reassert itself. Other times, you’ll need to address the thoughts that link the emotion to the behavior.
Address The Distorted Thoughts
Your brain creates thoughts to explain emotions and guide behavior in response. This was useful in the ancestral environment: I hear a noise (input) → I feel afraid (emotion) → This might be a dangerous animal (thoughts) → I need to flee (behavior).
But sometimes the thoughts our brains come up with are distorted and irrational. For example, we overgeneralize (“If one person thinks I’m stupid, everyone will.”); we focus on small negative details rather than the big picture (“My good performance this year doesn’t matter; I lost this one client.”); we dismiss positive experiences for irrational reasons (“My boss is only complimenting me out of pity.”); or we jump to unfounded, negative conclusions (“If this client doesn’t reply today, he must not be interested.”).
When you’ve identified the thought that links an emotion with a behavior, interrogate the thought. Good questions to ask are: Is this thought realistic? Is it based on facts or feelings? What’s the evidence for this thought? Could I be misinterpreting the evidence?
In my case, my social anxiety prompted thoughts like: People won’t like me; they’ll laugh at me; I’ll look stupid; and they’ll never want to talk to me again. And my resulting behavior was to prove my popularity by chasing likes on social media.
I refuted my distorted thoughts using evidence. For example, people enjoy my conferences; I regularly receive congratulatory audience feedback. My bosses have never complained about my communication skills. It was my own perception of my performance that was distorted.
After I identified and reappraised my distorted thoughts, my brain recognized the addictive behavior as nonsense and I was able to stop easily. Practicing this exercise has gradually trained my brain not to think of these distorted thoughts in the first place. I encourage you to follow the same approach.
