Your Phone Is Designed Like a Slot Machine To Keep You Addicted to it.
By: Ramsay Lewis
Tags: Mental Health, Psychology, Science, Technology, Self Improvement

Ever wonder why it is so hard to get off Facebook or Twitter?

Sure, partly it’s because we like connecting with our friends. And they are great places to get news. But sometimes we feel like we can’t stop scrolling. It can feel like we’re addicted.

Why?

Because our phone and many of the apps we use are intentionally designed to get you hooked. This article explains how they do it — why it’s difficult to stop using our phones even when we want to.

I also suggest one simple hack to help you get off your phone and back to real life.

What is an addiction and what causes it?

First, a quick note on what “addiction” actually is. Addiction occurs when a person “uses substances or engage in behaviours that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.” Simply doing something or using substances a lot is not enough to be considered an addiction. To be an addiction, there must be excessive use coupled with harmful consequences. These harmful consequences can include negative effects on work, school, or relationships.

We usually talk about addiction to substances like tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and opioids. But behavioural addictions are real too. Gambling is a relatively common behavioural addiction. Psychologists are also starting to look at whether we can sometimes be addicted to internet gaming.

Addictions are rooted in the reward centers of our brains. The reward center exists to encourage you to engage in activities that help keep you alive and propagate the species. It is activated, for example, when we eat or have sex because these are behaviours that are good for us and the species.

When this reward center is activated, it causes the release of neurotransmitters in our brain that make us feel good. Dopamine is one of those neurotransmitters.

Many of the substances that we become addicted to interfere with neurotransmitters like dopamine. Behaviours can do this too. For example, problematic gambling has been linked to the dopamine system.

Can we be addicted to our phones?

Smartphone addiction is not yet an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the main document used by psychologists to diagnose mental health conditions. However, we are increasingly seeing smartphone behaviour that looks a lot like addiction.

Researchers have found that some people do display the classic symptoms of addiction towards their phones: they overuse their phones, they lose control of how they use them, they can become preoccupied with them, they can experience withdrawal symptoms, and their phone use can have negative effects on their social and work lives.

It is important to reemphasize that just because a person uses their phone a lot does not mean that they are addicted to it. Still, there are many people that wish they would spend less time on their phones and have trouble reducing their use — even when they want to.

While it may not be an addiction in the DSM, it can feel like an addiction.

Why is it difficult to stop using our phones?

Part of the reason that we can have difficulty putting down our phones is that they have been intentionally designed to stimulate the reward center of our brains.

They use many of the same features as slot machines. Slot machines can be addicting because they have several features that are built to activate your neural reward center. They have bright, flashing lights and sounds that provide a dopamine hit and encourage us to keep playing. They also use a variable ratio schedule of reward — the wins are random. This means that, because you don’t know if you’ll be rewarded on the next pull, you want to keep doing it over and over again.

Our phone apps share some of these features of slot machines.

Likes.

Likes are the main source of reinforcement that apps provide. We love it when we get lots of likes.

Studies have shown that social stimuli — like smiling faces, positive recognition, messages from loved ones — cause our brains to release dopamine. The likes we get from social media, as well as the comments and messages, create a chemical reward that encourages us to engage more.

Every time we go on the app, it’s like pulling the lever on a slot machine: we could “win” likes from our friends. If you’re a writer on medium, this is views, reads, and claps. It’s why you keep going back to your stats page and constantly refreshing.

This is also what makes posting rewarding — we know that posting a picture, a tweet, or an article will result in engagement from others that we find rewarding.

Lights and colours.

Like the slot machines, apps provide lights and colours that make them more rewarding. Just think: would Candy Crush be nearly as interesting without all the colours?

Take another look at your social media apps these days. You’ll notice that likes are not simply a thumbs up or a red heart anymore.

Apps are increasingly using “micro-interactions” to provide even more of a dopamine hit. A micro-interaction “is a single use, subtle visual queue that draws your attention to a change in status. A power light on a coffee pot, or a color change on button hover are two examples.” Basically, they are the little animations that occur when you complete an action on an app or website.

On Twitter, if you like something, there’s a little circle of confetti that appears. Facebook’s reaction faces move when you hover over them and when you choose them. On Medium, when you clap for someone’s article, you see a little colourful firework.

Each of these is a micro-interaction. These apps are at the forefront of design, but you will start seeing micro-interactions in the majority of apps going forward.

Why include micro-interactions? For the same reason that the slot machines have flashing lights: they reward us with neurochemicals. They make us more likely to keep engaging with the app.

Uncertainty.

Uncertainty is rewarding. Researchers have found that anticipation of a reward can provide a hit of dopamine by itself.

In gambling, the anticipation that we get when we’re uncertain whether we’ll win can sometimes be as chemically rewarding as the win itself. That’s why slot machines don’t just instantly tell you whether you’ve won or lost. They let the wheels spin for a bit first.

Apps do this too. The little envelope with an “M” animation that happens before Gmail opens is one example. The blue circle icon on Twitter and the “M” that appears before Medium opens are two more. These are not simply to show you that the application is loading — they would occur even if your Internet was lightning fast. They are a design feature aimed at creating anticipation.

Anticipation is also why Facebook, Twitter, and others allow you to scroll indefinitely, and why we do sometimes end up scrolling indefinitely. It’s the same reason we continue to pull the lever at the slots: you never know when something good will come up. The uncertainty and anticipation of a reward encourage you to repeat the behaviour.

What can I do?

In response to the increasing time we’re spending on our phones, there’s been a movement towards “digital minimalism”. People are trying to do less on their phones and engage less with apps.

If you are also trying to reduce the time you spend on your phone or apps, here’s one, simple change you can make: change the settings of your phone so that it is in greyscale. Basically, remove the colours. You can do this by going into your phone’s settings and looking under accessibility features.

Why?

Because putting your phone in black and white removes the dopamine we get from the colours in the apps, and so it makes using them less rewarding. Experiencing Facebook in greyscale makes it less enjoyable — and easier to quit using.