Are We Really Addicted?

Long-time readers are probably picking up that I’m feeling down about the potential collapse of civilization thing. It is still to be determined whether this is a temporary intellectual blip or a firm thesis, but regardless, I’m on the hunt for technological hope. Today’s interview is my attempt to find it. 

One of the topics that I’ve been most interested in lately is addiction. Last month I summarized my thoughts on addiction and technology as follows: 

“As the world shifts to more digital competition, one of the most powerful long-term advantages is addiction. For businesses, this means that services that can grab and hold consumers’ attention for longer will be rewarded. For consumers, it means that we will have to be ruthless in our relationship with technology. Business best practices are not equivalent to consumer best interests. Whether professionally or personally, all of us will need to understand and reconcile ourselves to this phenomenon. In the years to come, whoever responds best will be rewarded.”

There are few people on the planet better to talk to about this as Nir Eyal. Nir is a behavioral designer, investor, author, and consultant that helps companies build the products and services that build healthy habits in users' lives. He has written two bestsellers. The first book, Hooked, was about how to build habit-forming products. The second book, Indistractable, was about how we break bad habits.

The conversation we had was fascinating with two primary takeaways:

1. The market will reward all companies, regardless if they are in the technology sector or not, if they are able to create the most engaging product. 
2. We have the power to fight back in our individual lives. 

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The importance of being precise with language when talking about addiction

I think words really matter, especially when we're talking about pathologies. An addiction is defined as a persistent compulsory dependency on a behavior or substance that harms the user—it is a pathology. In our society it's become a word that we toss around whenever we mean we like something a lot. That's a big mistake and I think it's a big mistake. It really doesn't do any service to people who suffer from this terrible disease of addiction, which afflicts about 3 to 5% of the population. It is a disease. It is not, ”I like Candy Crush, I like Nestle.” That is a different category altogether. It's people who, despite the harm it's doing them, cannot stop or have severe difficulty stopping without some professional therapy. So it really doesn't do a service to people who suffer from this terrible disease. Just like we shouldn't say, "I'm so ADHD." when you've never had a diagnosis. 

Why we don’t want technology to be less engaging, actually 

When it comes to the specific question around products built to be engaging, that is what they should do. “Hey, Netflix, can you please make shitty shows? Because I like to watch your shows a lot. Hey, Apple, your devices are really user-friendly. Can you please stop making them so user-friendly?” No. We want these products to be engaging. This isn't a problem, this is progress. Products made to be engaging—not addictive, engaging—are great. We finally live in an age where you can relax after work, and  instead of taking a drink or a hit or something, you can watch some TV to escape reality for a little bit, and it's pumped into your house for free or next to free.

Why tech companies don’t want to addict their customers

The goal of these tech companies is not to addict you, because people who get addicted tend to burn out. If you play a video game to the point where your social life suffers, where your spouse is angry at you, where your dog is crapping all over the floor, because you're not taking them on a walk, your life suffers. Eventually, unless you have a pathology of addiction, the vast majority of people have this circuit breaker in their brain that goes off. They say, "What am I doing? I need a life. I don't want to be a loser who just sits indoors and plays video games all the time. I want to play video games a little bit." That is directly aligned with the incentives of the media industry. They don't want to burn out their customers., They want their customers to use their products for the rest of their lives.

What happens to companies that don’t create engaging experiences for their customers

Look at Facebook, for example. I don't know anybody under 35 who uses Facebook. I know Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, but they're bleeding users under 35, because that product doesn't work for them anymore. It sucks too much of their time and attention, it's full of political garbage, it doesn't give them what they want. So people are going over to Snapchat, they're going over to TikTok, where I would argue it's a much healthier environment,