Human behavior is driven in part by a succession of reflexive cost-benefit calculations that determine whether an act will be performed once, twice, a hundred times, or not at all. Tech offers convenience, speed, and automation, but it also brings large costs. Songs that once took an hour to download now arrive in seconds, and the lag that dissuaded people from downloading in the first place has evaporated.
Hundreds of millions of people share their lives in real time through Instagram posts, and just as quickly those lives are evaluated in the form of comments and likes. The list is long-far longer than it’s ever been in human history, and we’re only just learning the power of these hooks.Ĭompared to the clunky tech of the 1990s and early 2000s, modern tech is efficient and addictive. In the 2010s, those same waters are littered with hooks. In the 1960s, we swam through waters with only a few hooks: cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs that were expensive and generally inaccessible. The environment and circumstance of the digital age are far more conducive to addiction than anything humans have experienced in our history. Why are the world’s greatest public technocrats also its greatest private technophobes? It seemed as if they were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply.Ĭompared to the clunky tech of the 1990s and early 2000s, modern tech is efficient and addictive. She softened her stance only when they needed computers for schoolwork. And Lesley Gold, the founder of an analytics company, imposed a strict no-screen-time-during-the-week rule on her kids. Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, bought hundreds of books for his two young sons, but refused to give them an iPad.
Chris Anderson, the former editor of WIRED, enforced strict time limits on every device in his home, “because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand.” His five children were never allowed to use screens in their bedrooms. “We limit how much technology our kids use in the home.”īilton discovered that other tech giants imposed similar restrictions. In late 2010, Steve Jobs told New York Times journalist Nick Bilton that his children had never used the iPad.
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