Photo Credit: Me
Google. Apple. Facebook. Amazon. Microsoft. Those are all common names in our lives and I can make a bet that you have used or own products from at least 4 of the 5 above. How can you not? Google has surpassed its legacy as a search engine and now offers cloud-based storage, email, document sharing, video chatting, phones, and home assistant devices. Amazon is no longer just a place to buy things but now has music, ebooks, pickup hot spots, and even produces film and tv series. Apple manufactures its own line of phones, computers, watches, and laptops and also an Apple store with music, apps, and television series.
The main point here is that big tech firms are massive and they are competing with each other to be a one-stop shop for consumers. Long gone are the days when they just provided one service and you owned products from a multitude of brands. Let’s take me for example. I’m typing this blog post on a Macbook Pro. My iPhone is on my nightstand, on top of my iPad, which has AppleTV queued up and ready for me to binge. All of these devices are synced with one another so even if I’m not on my phone, I can still receive text messages on my laptop and iPad. If I’m on my iPad and don’t have my phone nearby, I can still get my Facebook notifications and access them. It’s always connected no matter what device I’m using. The only thing I don’t have is an Apple watch so in reality, if I leave my various Apple electronics in my room and walk away, I wouldn’t have any connection to social media. But I do have a Fitbit, which is programmed to vibrate when I get calls or text messages…
There is always a way to keep connected and companies are becoming much more clever in how to do so. However, their common message point of “keeping people together and connected” is just a disguise for what they are truly after. In a 60 Minutes interview back in 2017, Anderson Cooper investigated “brain hacking,” a phenomenon that is the elephant in the room that people are choosing to ignore. Tristan Harris and other tech insiders who have worked at these companies reveal how our technology companies are actually seizing people’s minds. Apps and social media are created to get users to continuously use the platform and tweak the algorithm to find just the right moment to send a notification, or provide some meaningless reward like “hey you got 5 new followers in the past hour!” And just like that, you’re opening up Twitter or Facebook once again.
Slowly, these tech firms are tricking people into forming new habits, and not good ones either. It becomes an incessant need to check for text messages or notifications to the point where it makes people anxious to miss something. I myself don’t think I can go longer than an hour without checking my phone, even though I have my Fitbit on to alert me to calls or texts. The only way to get rid of that anxiety is to check your phone, which alleviates the anxiety until it builds up and the cycle starts all over again.
The second layer to all of this, and the most worrying, is how this behavior shapes the way we think and feel about ourselves and others. I get incredibly anxious when someone doesn’t text me back, and even more so when I can see that I’ve been left on read. The negative thought process goes into overdrive with phrases like:
“Why isn’t she texting me back? Did I say something wrong?”
“She used a period at the end of her text. She never does that. She must be mad at me.”
“I posted a video on Instagram yesterday and no one liked it.”
These apps go from becoming a form of entertainment to an addiction that is fueled by fear and anxiety. Our worth is judged by the response to our newest post, how many people retweeted our tweet, or if someone used 5 laughing emojis instead of 1.
As time goes on and technology develops, these companies will just get bigger and bigger, hacking our brains with new apps or shiny updates to the current ones. There is no going back to the way things were before any of these companies existed; it will only escalate from here. If we don’t realize the effect that this is having on us soon, then the damage to society will be irreversible.
I’ll leave you with something that I found on an app that currently is brain-hacking me: TikTok. In this 2 part TikTok, makeup, and special effects artist @katesjamboree created a point of view (POV) scenario, “after the world's governments fail, some of the most powerful companies take over the world.” It’s set to a song whose lyrics couldn’t be more fitting to this discussion. I have put the videos as a hyperlink below instead of embedding because there is a minor flash warning and also some of the makeup may be disturbing to some (mostly fake blood).
The song used is called The Fine Print by The Stupendium.
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