Why you're addicted to your smartphone (Marketplace)

[Music] left to our own devices you are constantly engaged click on that Twitter queue or your email but how much control do we really have it's just addictive yeah playing all those apps he seems to prefer being on his tablet over at everything else or maybe they're playing us all in a technological arms race to keep you there the longest it is a real-world experiment and no one's figured out the risks of all those rewards this is your marketplace we've all seen them maybe even beam them people glued to their phones walking not watching whoa we offer a service here in Canada almost 3/4 of us own one they just help you guys as you're walking and texting go ahead you can just keep your head down and I'll clear the path watch out folks Thanks [Music] this guy he's really into his fault we follow up for 30 seconds never noticed our average daily use almost three hours I can help clear the crowds Maria they're taking over our lives like nothing before you go ahead you if you finish that message I'll keep the path clear for you did you ever think smartphones you get to this point good alright for now I'm leading them but where is all of this leaving us what if you forgot your phone at home that's the biggest that's it about the stress how did we get so hooked all life right here alone I don't know where I'd be I laugh about it but it's part of a plan you didn't even know you signed up for house I catch myself about the text call am i doing so stupid twice why do we okay we're gonna try to answer I'm gonna meet you good me too I wasn't gonna take your phone this is World Report's it's been 10 years since the first iPhone went on sale and now it's the norm to have the internet social media and countless apps in the palm of your hand as someone who covers this stuff you'd think I'd know better you are constantly engaged click on that Twitter queue or your email the pressure to kind of go back and forth I don't drink coffee but I do have an addiction and here it is it's ringing actually hello yep this is a real call it's my wife I'm doing I'm doing a talk for marketplace right now about how much I am on my phone you want to take a guess no it's not 24 hours a day that's not possible [Music] we found a family in Guelph Ontario is willing to do more than guess there is an app that we're engaged to put on your phone but worried about what we'll find [Music] our family has agreed to let us track their devices over the next two months using an app called moment can you guys download it you've already found it mark you've got it you're downloading it measures how often they're on their phones we agree you're not gonna pee right agree yeah agree what they're using them for wait do you want it to send me notifications and how long they're at it what we can't see is your tax we can't see your photos this way higher than using the phone for silly things I just feel guilty about it I don't know why okay I'd be willing to bet your family all of you aren't any different from my family aren't any different from that family or that family or people on the other side of the country but we're trying to do something we're trying to actually learn something right but we're not the only ones tracking these guys [Music] down here in California there's a whole industry that's keeping tabs on how all of us use our phones so they can try to make us use them more Ramsey Brown knows all about it he does it for a living now what is it you do here at dopamine loves yes so we use AI and neuroscience to help apps become more engaging and persuasive in other words more addictive so this is what our AI is figuring out how to personalize for every person uniquely what other that's the extra 10 points the good job the high five the congrats Ramsey says the secret lies in giving our brains pleasure it's not an accident it's a conscious design decision we're really living in this new era that we're not just designing software anymore we're designing minds okay now that freaks me out so there's all this manipulation if the gain is getting my attention yeah it's so valuable the biggest tech firms in the world now we're figuring out what they can do to continuously juice people for them a doubling and the amount of time someone's spending on their platform can translate to a doubling of revenue and if you can do that in just a few lines of code it's a no-brainer for them a no-brainer that plays with our brains using a method called variable rewards you never sure what you'll get and that's what makes it so compulsive you're using these apps that are designed to keep you on the hook it's not every single time that they're going to be paying out giving you those likes giving you those thumbs up Facebook loves giving variable rewards and it works we now spend nearly an hour on Facebook every day 25% more than we did just two years ago in that same time our overall smartphone use has shot up more than an hour and a half a day the other glove ladies take a look at mark the dad we're tracking he's a softball coach and a sports junkie who likes his fix he's been treated I got a shot I'll walk read three or four other stories it kind of lures you in there you know it hours have passed Tanya confesses something else too I'm watching a TV show I might be on my phone just scrolling and by the time the TV shows done and I have no idea what the show was about she's talking about Facebook and a phenomenon known as the infinite scroll it traps you in an endless stream of content of shares likes thumbs up I'll just look at it too just for something to do and it makes me happy innovation her son Jackson's never far from his device either wake up eat breakfast Samsung Samsung go to school he's been wired up for half his life and he's only eight and then after school Samsung Samsung Samsung eats before I go to bed cuz I'm hungry Samsung Samsung go to bed good night sleep sleep like a sheik one of Jackson's favorite apps musically like many apps music Lee's free he's supposed to be 13 to sign up but it is easy for anyone to join and kids Jackson's age love it because like kids of all ages these days it's all about the followers I'm musically I have over a thousand over a thousand Wow what does that mean to have that many people I feel really happy when I go on it and you want to be followed by more people think about it the two biggest creators of this technology didn't let their own kids have access to their revolutionary devices what did they see coming that the rest of us don't it's a question that people like Lisa Pont are trying to answer people are showing up at our door saying hey this is really having a negative impact on our life and so we're starting from there she's a social worker at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health his addiction is a compulsive behavior what is it research is starting to show that technology has an impact on memory concentration mood so anxiety and depression it has an impact on sleep has an impact on overall well-being but what about children specifically kids like Jackson if you give them a buffet of candy and say all right you have at it they're probably not going to stop themselves they'll probably have to get sick before they stop so I think is particularly younger people need some parental guidance around how much they use because it's too tempting to at that age to mitigate their own use they're not you're not even dealing with a fully developed brain who has the same kind of impulse control or ability to foresee consequences so how much is Jackson using we track him in the summer for nearly eight weeks then add up his screen time his average is five hours a day but on many days it's twice that eight nine ten hours mostly on YouTube we haven't told his mum yet but she sees it coming I do worry about the amount of time that Jackson spends on his tablet he seems to prefer being on his tablet over everything else meantime sixteen year old Emily is trading sleep for social media I just get up in my room and I'm like I'm just gonna check my phone quick before bed and then I get scrolling and time keeps ticking where I get concerned about emily is when she's doing her homework she's maybe frustrated it's taking too long and you can hear the phone going ding ding ding ding all those notifications have concerned experts taking notice so I already see an increase in heart rate after you took your phone oh this is your market place the real deal on your market price if you ever want to know how much our phones are taking over our lives [Music] it's convinced a teenager your own a bit towards you to put her device down long enough to capture what's going on around her Jackson he's Emily's brother geometry does and these are her friends they're hooked on social media remember the more they do this the more money for tech companies but what's the cost to us if I don't have it I feel like I'm not myself I guess to find out we're tracking Emily's phone use for her friends that means snapchat can I get a small try to latte they use it constantly to communicate sending photos to each other even when they're side by side like it's something like every single morning you wake up and do it routine and like if you don't do it and you're different from everyone else they call it FOMO fear of missing out I just need to know what's going on and I just feel like I need to answer before like I'm out of the loop kind of thing so a hundred and fifty eight million people use snapchat every day so what keeps them so fixated my highest one right now is 643 with one of my friends from baseball Minds 547 they're talking about streaks the number of days in a row you snap a friend emily has a street that's been going almost two years just kind of like now we have to that's called loss aversion something that started as a pleasure is now a prison especially if it's over a year then it's really intense and you have to just another way app designers keep us coming back for more proof is on Emily's phone there are days she's on it five six sometimes seven hours mostly on snapchat days of picking up her phone a hundred times I feel like before there were streets I went on snapchat way less it's just addictive yeah I feel like that's what the snapchat creators did like they made it so that now like people have to go on snapchat like oh yeah that is why snapchat did it according to Ramsey Brown is what we built that's actually gonna show up on their phones he doesn't work for snapchat but does help smaller companies make their apps more addictive so if the game is all about keeping people on your app then snapshot with its street because it's winning it's definitely in their business model is to get you to find a way to binge and while we're binging social media is collecting info about us targeting us with ads and breaking in the box together these sites will make about forty billion in ad revenue this year alone it's a winning formula for them that may come with serious consequences for us anxiety distraction I notice it in myself okay so this is Western University it's actually where some of the best people in Canada are when we talk about cognitive function things to do with our brains so they're gonna test me don't know how I'm gonna do we're gonna find out we want to know when you become destructed how that changes your cognition Bobby stoyanov ski is going to test my attention my memory and my focus there you know this away from you okay I'm wired up to a heart monitor so I already see an increase in heart rate after we took your phone job that's something start challenge no phone no distraction accurately says the color that's a tricky one after the first round Bobby's gonna add my phone into the mix we're gonna do it again but we're gonna add some distraction we are nor the word I can't see it but I can hear us [Music] and I start to make mistakes nor the word all right good job how did you feel the first time it rang I was taken out of out of what I was doing next it gets harder I have to remember numbers that are being texted to me it reflects the way we normally interact with their phones yeah you've sent a message to a partner or a co-worker expecting some bit of information and now you're waiting to hear back from them on cue my producer Virginia starts texting me remembering these numbers not so easy okay four six five five six six six six seven well done the last two I actually just made a conscious decision I said forget it just when I think it's over Bobby turns up the heat Square as bigger circle but I have a strategy each time a call comes in I mute the phone as they come in it's vibrating and that's a huge distraction Minh and keeping tabs on the dinging Tex impossible we all choose different ways of compensating therefore the degree of distraction that our phones provide a quick fix turn off my notifications easier said than done let's get footage clearly I get distracted but how much your verbal went down by nearly twenty percent okay that means my attention and it nosedives that's a big drop that is a fairly significant role it's early days for this kind of research no one really knows the long-term impact of our phone fixation especially on young minds there are days when he is on this tablet for nine or more hours does that surprise you this is your marketplace hooked on your phone on your marketplace this family in Guelph Ontario loves their devices and we're about to find out just how much why do you have the TV on too [Music] nestled among all their apps Facebook snapchat YouTube is one that's been keeping track of their daily use for nearly two months screen time is only three hours and 34 minutes per day their numbers are more surprising when you break them down it says I'm on my phone twenty-one percent per day so 21 percent of the time that you're awake you're on your phone it sounds bad here's another way 1/5 of the day and that's what it is for mark - what does it say about how many years you'll spend on your phone oh eight point eight years that's awful eight years that's how old her son Jackson is so what about him and his sister Emily they were tracked in the summer when school was out and devices were in Oh thirty percent of my day 30 percent of your day I think for me that's like a realization that I actually do have more time than I think time she's mostly spending under snapchats addictive spell we've been trying to tell her that for years at the rate she's going Emily will spend nine and a half years of her life on her phone that's insane I asked mom and dad to look at Jackson's tracker but there are days when he is on this tablet for nine or more hours does that surprise you it surprises me a little bit that it's not high I find a lot of times he does have his Samsung on and it's running and he's not even watching it not to try and just it's understanding when he has an activity his day is consumed and his hours go down without more activities and less YouTube Jackson's projections of lifetime use are even more shocking Jackson you're 15 years bad habits really well we we know different families that have shut the Wi-Fi down at 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock right you know but as a parent I guess you have to lead by example for us you know it's a realization that we have to maybe invest our time a little bit better than we do they may be the focus of the experiment for the experiments all of us the experiments me the experiments every family that you see out there so many of us are doing exactly what they're doing you open your apps so what about the companies that helped turn us into guinea pigs Facebook won't do an interview and won't be offering a statement Instagram never even responded to our requests YouTube says they're about building communities musically declines - and snapchat won't go on the record not so social after all just down the road from snapchat Ramsay Brown is still helping hook us but he also wants to help warn us now this technology exists what do we want out of it what do we want out of ourselves because really this is the technology of shaping ourselves who do we want to be if you need to text and walk I can help you words that should make all of us look up and maybe find another way forward [Music] take a ride undercover inside car dealerships 112 bi-weekly at 0% this is the trick the average consumer sees that you think oh I can afford that car these all would be done anything you want it's troubling I want to go in there and find out what's going on how not to buy a car [Music] and [Music]

Channel: CBC News

Views: 817,287

Rating: 4.8502383 out of 5

Keywords: why, addicted, smartphone, companies, science, artificial intelligence, hooked, tech, insiders, curb, urge, constantly, connected, Marketplace, David Common

Id: ZFJUYS6wY7U

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2017