How Technology Is Hijacking Your Mind

How Technology Is Hijacking Your Mind

Hijack 8:
Substituting Your Reasons with Their Reasons

Another way that applications can control you is by fusing your goals for using the app—completing a task — with its commercial objectives — maximizing our consumption while we’re there.

For instance, in the real world of grocery shops, purchasing milk and getting prescription refills are the top two reasons people go there. The pharmacy and the milk, however, are located at the back of the shop because supermarket stores seek to maximize the amount that customers purchase.

In other words, they combine what the company wants with what the customer wants (milk, pharmacy). The most well-liked things would be placed at the front of the shelves if businesses were actually set up to support customers.

The websites of tech corporations are all created similarly. For instance, the Facebook app intentionally prevents you from accessing a Facebook event without first landing on the news feed (your reason) when you want to search up one that is taking place tonight. Facebook aims to turn every reason you use the site — to increase the amount of time you spend consuming content — into a justification for using Facebook.

Instead, picture what would happen if…

  • Twitter provided a different method for posting a tweet besides having to view their news feed.
  • Facebook provided a different option to search for Facebook Events happening tonight without having to utilize their news feed.
  • Facebook made it possible for you to create new accounts on third-party apps and websites using Facebook Connect as your passport without having to download the Facebook app, news feed, or notification system.
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