Former Google product manager Tristan Harris claims that tech giants are using borrowed techniques from casinos to get us hooked to our smartphones.
MailOnline reported that Harris said that there is a widespread phenomenon called 'brain hacking' by computer programmers and warned that the procedure is destroying kids' abilities to focus.
'They are shaping the thoughts and feelings and actions of people. They are programming people.There's a whole playbook of techniques that get used to get you using the product for as long as possible.' Harris told CBS during an interview.
According to Harris, the notification streams on smartphones and apps such as Facebook are acting a little more like slot machines - They allow users to slowly gather rewards over time.
"Every time I check my phone, I'm playing the slot machine to see, "What did I get? This is one way to hijack people's minds and create a habit, to form a habit. What you do is you make it so when someone pulls a lever, sometimes they get a reward, an exciting reward.
And it turns out that this design technique can be embedded inside of all these products," he said.
Harris cited for example that Twitter lets its users slowly build up followers, while Snapchat keeps a running score based on how much you use the apps.
Inverse explained that the slot machine is the jolt of dopamine that rewards people for doing something worthy of a reward. The publication suggests, the effect found its way into humans' digital lives
According to Inverse, every time a person checks on his phone and sees a like or comment or retweet, the brain releases a bit of dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that is also present in large quantity in the brains of a cocaine user.
Science also suggests that dopamine drives many of human's behaviors such as eating sweets, acting kindly towards other people and excelling.
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