Hijack 6:
Endless flows, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay
Keeping people from stopping eating when they are no longer hungry is another method of hijacking them.
How? Simple. Take a limited and finite experience and transform it into a boundless stream that never ends.
In his study, Cornell professor Brian Wansink showed how you can fool individuals into continuing to eat soup by offering them a bottomless bowl that fills up as they eat. People who use bottomless bowls consume 73% more calories than those who use regular bowls and overestimate their calorie intake by 140 calories.
The same concept is applied by tech companies. News feeds are intentionally made to automatically reload with content to keep you reading and to remove any opportunity for you to stop, think, or quit completely.
Additionally, it explains why video and social media platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook automatically play the next video after a countdown rather than delaying playback until you make a decision (in case you won’t). These websites receive a significant amount of traffic thanks to the autoplaying of the next video.
When genuinely advancing their commercial interests, tech companies frequently make the assertion that “We’re just making it easier for people to view the video they want to watch.” You can’t blame them either because the money they fight for is increasing “time spent.”
Instead, picture a world where technology companies gave you the freedom to intentionally shape your experience such that it matched your personal definition of “time well spent.” Limiting not only how much time you spend, but also the characteristics of “time well spent”.
