What’s behind the thinking of designers is that there’s reward in the social approval of peers, believing you’re on society’s cutting edge, and believing you have conscious choices to “enhance” your day.
“If you want to maximize addictiveness,” Harris went on, “all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.”
In his Thrive Global article, Harris goes on to compare our app addictions with gambling addictions to things like slot machines. “Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it’s good for business.”
So the next time you pull your “slot machine” out of your pocket, think for a moment. Is it giving you rewards to enhance your life and solve your problems or feeding you rewards to keep you pulling the lever?
Here’s an example to illustrate what we mean — look at your list of Facebook friends. When’s the last time you reached out to them or they reached out to you? Friends stay in touch with each other. It’s part of the definition. Maybe our reward on Facebook is the social approval of a long list of names. Facebook makes billions betting on just that gamble.
