Are We Actually Addicted To Our Phones? — With Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal is the bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a spirited debate over whether we're actually addicted to our phones, the ethics of app developers who use tricks to keep us coming back, and what to do about it. You can find Nir's books here: http://geni.us/Indistractable and http://geni.us/hooked Here's an Indistractable summary article: https://www.nirandfar.com/skill-of-the-future/ And a distraction guide: https://www.nirandfar.com/distractions/ And a schedule maker tool: https://nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Mira Els in the house is the author of Hooked and Indistractable, two bestselling books that dig into all the ways we get attached to apps and our phones and what to do about it. Mira, welcome to the show. Good to see you, man. Hey, great to see you, Alex. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you here. I think the last time we spoke, well, we spoke in once in between just to talk about scheduling for this. But last time we really talked, we were at a crowded bar in New York City. And my book was about to come out, yours had recently come out, and then nothing's happened since. It's been pretty calm all across the globe. Anyway.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. I wish people could, everybody could see your expression right now.

• 2:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  The, the palm to, to forehead sigh there is awesome. It says everything you need to know.

• 2:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I do want to, it does look like we're on the mend, hopefully, barring any further variants. And, um, and it's good to be back in touch. Uh, and so I appreciate you doing this. We're going to talk about, uh, phone addiction, the science of phone addiction and, um, and what to do about it. You've written these two books, Hooked and Indistractable. It, it's interesting because, you know, we talk about tech all the time. We talk about the new products that these companies have made and all the problems they're having in Washington. But I would say one of the things that always looms underneath the surface that doesn't get discussed enough is our relationships with these phones and what they do for us and how, uh, how they have us in our gra, in their grasp, at least most of us, maybe not you, because you've written the books.

• 2:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, and, uh, and I think that it's great to have you on because we get a chance to talk about the power that they have over us. And the discussion about that power, which has really come to the fore now with movies such as The Social Dilemma. So I want to start with a broad question, just so we can set the table here. How big of a problem is phone addiction right now from your perspective?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  I think that the perception of phone addiction is a much bigger problem than the actual addiction. Meaning that what, what I think the narrative that has not been widely heard is the counter narrative to the technology is hijacking your brain narrative is the, uh, the very popular notion that I think is very misguided, that the technology is controlling us.

• 3:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, right. I, I, we'll, we'll get to the, um, we'll get to the, the narratives. I won't, you know, we'll talk about that. But I just, well, I'm curious from your perspective, because when I think about, okay, we have to like set the, the level here, right? What's the baseline that we're going to discuss as we go through this conversation? And from my perspective, this is actually an issue. Now, whether the, you know, there are these automatons that are hijacking our brains, we're going to go through like how much agency we have over. But don't you think it's an issue? I mean, I can't put my phone down for more than, you know, five minutes. So, and, and it seems to be, sure, I mean, I'm sort of gonna, leading question here, but it seems to be shortening our attention spans, increasing

• 4:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  our distance between fellow human beings and, and controlling our lives, those of us who don't have, you know, the wherewithal or the tools to deal with it. So what do you think the magnitude of the problem is?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Look, I think that there's a wonderful quote by Paul Verilli, who said that when you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. So there's no doubt in my mind that there are adverse consequences to every new technology. The, the question is, you know, is it net good or net bad? And I don't think that that is a controversy. I think that by and large, these technologies are a net good. I mean, can you imagine trying to go through this COVID crisis without these tools? I mean, it would be a million times worse if we didn't have these technologies. Imagine if this was not COVID-19. Imagine if it was COVID-90, right? We tried to go through this in the year 1990 versus the year 2019.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  I mean, it would be unimaginably worse. So-

• 5:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but COVID can't be the answer to why technology is good. Like, we can't just say that because we were able to Zoom, we don't really have an issue with, you know-

• 5:37Speaker 01

  I mean, do you, do you honestly think, can you look at me in a straight face and say that it's not a net benefit?

• 5:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I mean, that's, I mean, I'm like, well, first of all, I think that we can have a nuanced discussion about it, but we have to leave the idea of COVID being this once, well, hopefully, once in a generation-

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I think it's an illustration. I think it's one data point. I think it's, yeah, I think it's one point.

• 5:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I guess, like, yeah, I do think, I'm not a techno pessimist. I think that technology, I gotta put this out there, I do think technology is a net good. And the question we talk about on the show often is, how can it be better?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  And how do you mitigate some of the downsides?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  And that's why, that's why I'm such a big fan of your show is that you're about nuance. And I think that should be the debate. It's not technology, good, technology, bad. It's, yeah, it's nuanced. It's how you're using it, how much you're using it, who is using it? And what would you be doing instead of using it? So is distraction a problem? Absolutely. I wrote a whole book about how to become indistractible because I think distraction is a big problem. Is addiction to technology a big problem?

• 6:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  It is a problem. Hey, look, any form of human suffering is a problem. Are some people addicted? Absolutely. Look, some people are addicted to sniffing glue. Some people are addicted to eating paint. There's all kinds of addictions out there. The question is, is technology addiction as big of a problem as people think it is? No, I think far too many people believe that they are addicted and they're not. They're just distracted. But of course.

• 7:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there's really an eating paint addiction. I didn't know about that.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Do you remember that? Do you remember that show Intervention?

• 7:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I never saw it before.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Check out, if you get a chance, go on YouTube. Another interesting technology we could talk about. Look at the, look, look at that show. They profile all kinds of addictions.

• 7:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  But near, once I get in there, I'm not going to be able to.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  No kidding.

• 7:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, I mean, I do think that, you know, it's, there's also this interesting conversation about whether, you know, you can be addicted to nicotine. We've had a podcast here, talked about Juul. And that's actual physical addiction. But do you think that someone can be like physically addicted to technology? What's your perspective on that?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Well, there's, it's not a physical addiction. It's a behavioral addiction and some people do get addicted. There's no doubt about it, right? People get addicted to all kinds of things. And so some people can become pathologically addicted. The difference is we need to understand what really is an addiction. An addiction is defined as a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms the user. Okay. It is not, I like it a lot. And we have substituted this term addiction for everything these days. You know, my, my wife got a box of shoes. From DSW and on the side of the box, it says danger addictive contents inside. Give me a break. Come on, they're they're shoes.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  So everything has become an addiction and I think that the reason we do that is that we like to give up control. We like this narrative of, well, there's nothing I can do about it. It's an addiction. Right? It's not in my behavior. And of course, there are vested interests that want you to believe that the only way out is with me. And in fact, I think that, you know, to to your to your

• 8:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, these are the the thinkfluencers that are saying the only way I can lead you out is with me or who is who are the people that are saying that?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Look, you know, I was interviewed for the Social Dilemma movie. I sat down with them for three hours and wanted to give them a a path out of, hey, look, you know, look, I spent five years writing this book on how to become indistractable. Is overuse of technology a problem? Absolutely, it's a problem. I think many people struggle with that, including me from time to time. But it's not an addiction. It's a distraction. We can do something about it. And here you go. Here's exactly what to do. I combed the research literature for five years. Here's what we do to get out of it. Nothing that I said, and in fact, nothing that anyone who countered the Social Dilemma narrative was included in the movie. Why do you think that is? It doesn't make for a

• 9:38Speaker 01

  good story. Nobody likes the narrative, you know, it's, you know, I like to say that the Social Dilemma is a documentary in the same way that Jaws was a documentary about sharks. It's it's as if you go to the doctor and the doctor says, hey, you have a terrible disease and I have the cure, but I'm not going to give it to you. Are you kidding me? Like, that that is irresponsible. What they did was to promote an agenda. And by the way, the people in the movie paid for the movie, right? Many people don't know that, but the movie was was partially funded by people who are actually in the movie to promote an agenda that the only way out is through us. And I think that's very dangerous.

• 10:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  And but when they say through us, when they say through us, is it through like our speaking fees and our events and our our organizations?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  The organization, the Center for Humanate Technology.

• 10:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why don't you expand on it?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Which again, sounds great.

• 10:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's Tristan Harris's organization.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Right. And look, I, I, I, uh, I, let's start with the good here. I think it's great that we have a critical eye towards the good and bad that technology causes. I think that's a wonderful thing. I'm very glad that he's, uh, making us, uh, take a, uh, um, a critical perspective. I think that's wonderful. There are many bad things that come out of technology, absolutely, right? The shipwrecks. But I think it's irresponsible to try and show one side of the story, especially when you're right, when you have a movie about filter bubbles, uh, about how terrible social media is because it promotes these filter bubbles. And yet this movie is one big filter bubble. Oh yeah, on Netflix. I mean, how ironic is

• 11:16Speaker 01

  that? Uh, using all the psychological tricks, all the, you know, the, the caricatures of, of voodoo dolls and these algorithms, these evil algorithms that are trying to, uh, you know, hijack your brain. They use the exact same psychology that they bemoan on social media, all the filter bubbles, not offering any other perspective. And I think that's incredibly irresponsible.

• 11:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And there was some selective editing, which we found out on, on this show, uh, in the conversation with Tristan. So, uh, so that was interesting. But I, I'm curious why you think that resonated so much with so many people. I mean, the social dilemma as a movie, uh, has been watched by so many people, people who don't care about, uh, tech in general. And I've heard this from friends and friends and friends, friends and friends. When they talk about technology, they say, oh, have you, have you seen the movie? Obviously there's a belief among people, and this was sort of what we were getting out before, you know, this, uh, uh, you know, this is a problem and people want you to believe that you don't have agency over it. Um, but obviously what we've been talking about before,

• 12:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  it, it does resonate with people. And sort of, I'm going back to the original question I asked at the beginning here, because I think it's important. There's a definite problem going on here, don't you think? If it resonated with all these people, if these people said, yes, that makes sense to me. Clearly, they feel like technology is controlling them in ways that are beyond their ability to get out.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Look, we love conspiracy theories.

• 12:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  But we live, we, of course, but we also, I mean, yes, the story, but we also live this stuff.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 12:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Conspiracy theories spread because they're a manifestation of confirmation bias. Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  So historically, there is a moral panic about every new technology. I mean, if you take Tristan's words that he said in front of Congress, those are, some of them are verbatim. Verbatim, what was said about comic books in the 1950s, literally word for word. It's the children that need to be protected, right? It's, it's these vulnerable populations. It's hijacking our brains, like literally word for word, what was said about comic books? What was said about the television? What was said about the radio? What was said about novels? What was said about the bicycle? There's a beautiful scene in the social dilemma where Tristan says, nobody freaked out about the bicycle.

• 13:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Meanwhile, a lot of people did.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  It's just this technology. In fact, that's quite, it's exactly the opposite of what happened. People did freak out about the bicycle, about how women having this freedom to ride around wherever they please was a terrible thing, that their minds would turn to mush, that they would get bicycle face. I'm not making this up. This really happened. And so every new technology, we have this moral panic about, especially when it comes to save the women and children. This is what we hear time and time again, especially when it's a technology that enables people to, who were previously unable to get their views out there. Now they have a medium to go around centralized media. That's a huge threat.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And look, the reason we hear so much about how terrible technology is in the mainstream media is that they are a threat. You know, we, the movie talked about how it was Facebook and Twitter and Instagram that are sucking our attention and monetizing our eyeballs. But what exactly is CNN's business model? What's the New York Times business model? What is Fox News's business model? They all monetize your attention. This is nothing new. It's not the business model that's so dramatically different.

• 14:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I, let's, let's pause there. Okay, you know, I've heard this argument a lot and it's different because, you know, I do, does, do some mainstream media organizations play for your attention? For sure. But I don't think that's the only value that they have. Whereas I do think that's.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  I didn't say that.

• 14:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but I do think that some of these apps are very clear that they're not a star is completely all about engagement, in my perspective.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's, you know, of course it is.

• 15:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Right. Do you not think that Netflix or, uh, okay, let's go back HBO, uh, or let's go back CBS or let's go back, I mean, any kind of, any form of media, I mean, we've been here before. Look at the days of, of yellow journalism. Everybody who sells ads is, is monetizing your eyeballs.

• 15:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  And by the way, just to be clear, I don't have a problem with that business model. There's nothing ethically wrong with selling ads per se. I think the hypocrisy of saying, oh, you know, only this form of advertising is wrong without saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, what's, what are the political ramifications of the crap you hear on Fox News or the crap you hear in other publications? And so as a justification for your earlier question of, okay, why is that? Why do we hear only the bad side? It's because this new form of media is a direct threat to traditional forms of media.

• 16:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I, I have a bone to pick with that one because I do think that like the traditional press does at sometimes, at some points decide that doesn't want to optimize for, you know, for views. Otherwise, like, think about what the New York Times could do if it wanted to just be a, you know, a, a news site that optimizes for views on the internet. There'd be a lot of stuff that it wouldn't cover. Think about, I'll explain like even this podcast, right? Like if I wanted to, there's certain tricks that I could use to sort of play up the engagement and get more ad dollars, but I choose not to. As opposed to some of the platforms who are all about, who need to show that growth quarter by quarter.

• 16:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm willing to sacrifice that growth in order to do a show that aligns with the values that I have here. But a lot of these tech platforms, I don't think they are.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  So you're saying that because an organization, a media organization is prudent in terms of not doing everything they could potentially do to maximize engagement, that that shows that they are ethical?

• 17:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that there's, I think that they do not have the same motivations as some of these tech platforms. And while they do, I don't doubt that like, for instance, some people in the news industry think Facebook is a threat to their business and that motivates some of their anti-Facebook coverage. I also think that there are some real issues with phone addiction in particular that aren't driven by-

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Wait, but let's just stay on track, Alex. So you were saying that, hey, there's all kinds of-

• 17:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, you gotta let me finish the sentence.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  No, but you're going off track. You're going off track. You said, there's things that I do as a podcaster that I could do to juice engagement that I don't do. And you're saying that's what the New York Times does as well, therefore they're more ethical than the social media companies?

• 17:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I was on track. I think the question was, what we were talking about was whether that causes them to cover tech negatively, right? Wasn't that the assertion?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  That, I think there are, that certainly is a motivation-

• 18:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  That, that there is a negativity bias to look at the downside of tech without mentioning anywhere near, I think, a balanced perspective, or even an empowering perspective on what we could do about it. And to emphasize your point earlier, we know that the tech companies, and by the way, I'm not an apologist for the tech companies. If people want to uninstall Facebook, go for it. I want you to. If you don't find it useful, screw them, right? Uninstall them. But you can't say that these companies are doing everything they can for engagement or to have that innuendo that, oh, all they care about is boosting engagement. You know, Facebook hired 10,000 content moderators. They've spent billions of dollars collectively

• 18:52Speaker 01

  between the social media companies, doing things that reduce engagement by taking off content that is inappropriate or is long-term a bad thing for their platform. So we can't say they're doing nothing. They are definitely trying. Are they doing everything they could be doing? Absolutely not. Is there more they could be doing? Absolutely. But they are also not just looking for every buck by leaving up content that they think is going to be dangerous. They have taken down- All kinds of content that otherwise could make them money. They have definitely, you can't say they're doing nothing. They're definitely doing a lot to be more responsible.

• 19:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I wouldn't say they're doing nothing. I'd say that engagement is in our star, whereas in other places it's not. And, and, you know, I do think that, um, you know, they'll take down as much as they can and stay in business without getting a backlash from Congress or, or as little regulation as possible. But, um, in terms of engagement as the North Star, I mean, I'll just quote from you from one of your talks that you gave on Hooked, which was the book about how to, um, how products can get people coming back, can hook them before you are indistractable. So you said growth hacking is important. And if you can't retain users, if you can't keep them coming back, you've got nothing. And engagement is more important than growth. All about modulating people's moods.

• 20:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  So even you said it, that it's the North Star for people.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Because when we, when we work with a product like a fitness app, uh, like Fitbod that uses the hook model to get people to exercise, absolutely, we want them to keep coming back. A company I invested in Kahoot is an education startup that we want people to, we want kids to get hooked onto education. So the idea behind my work with, with Hooked, it's, I didn't write this book for the social media companies. That's where, that's, I stole their secrets so that the idea was to democratize these techniques so that the rest of us can build products and services that are engaging and habit forming to build good habits in people's lives.

• 20:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm hmm. And so that's, that's basically what I'm gonna get at is what I'm getting at here is that, uh, there are more different motivations from a news, a news site and a tech company. And to, to say that they're all aiming for the same thing just because they're unsupported, I think is a little off base.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Well, I, I, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that everybody who sells ads, I mean, if you look at what is the most important metric for Fox News or CNN, it's the ratings. It's all about the ratings, whether it's, you know, Seinfeld, Friends, I don't know, like, this is nothing new. Companies that make content that is monetized by ads care about engagement. There is no other metric. And frankly, what is the alternative? We want anybody who makes interesting content to make that content engage. And do we really want to tell the television stations, "Hey, your television shows are too good. Please make your shows more boring." Do we want to tell Apple, "Hey, Apple, you know, your phones are way too user-friendly. Please make them less engaging." That makes no sense.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  And so, you know, some of the proposals we see today, you know, Josh Hawley had, Senator Hawley had a proposal around, you know, banning the infinite scroll that we, that he thinks that by taking away some of these tactics, we're gonna, we're gonna reduce, I don't know what he's trying, what the goal is. He wants to make them essentially worse. He wants, and one of the, part of the proposal is a pop-up every 30 minutes that you use social media that says, "Hey, do you want to keep using it? You've been using it for 30 minutes." Is that really the solution? Is that really what we want? I don't think we can legislate away a product's ability to be good, to be engaging. That is why we engage with these products and services. So I think that's, that's very troublesome. The reason this is done, by the way, is that

• 22:37Speaker 01

  the entire narrative of, of much of this regulation, and again, I want to stay in my swim lane, so I'm not an expert in terms of monopoly status, I think content moderation, there's lots of things that we have to hold these companies accountable for. I'm not a tech apologist, but when it comes to this argument around, "Hey, we have to pass this legislation. I'm your savior. My organization is going to get you out of this," because you can't stop, because you're addicted. And I think that much of this argument rests on this idea that, you know, you are powerless consumer, you can't do anything about it. That's just not true.

• 23:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no, I agree with you on that front. But again, I'm just going to go back to what I said before and we can move on. But, but look, I don't think that like the idea is boring or, or, you know, engagement. Like, I don't think that's the trade off. Like, you can be ethical and, and, and interesting. And you can sort of, you know, you can take a lot of your principles and throw them out the window and be the most engaging new site on the internet if you want. But there are trade offs there. So I don't know how we got into this spiral, but let's get out of it. Why don't we take a break? We'll be back right after this. The I I want to talk a little bit more about the sequence of his books.

• 23:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then maybe we can talk about some tools that people can use to unhook themselves from the products we're hooked on. We'll be back right after this on the Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf.

• 24:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. App Point, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to apppoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 25:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on the Big Technology Podcast with Nir Eyal, the bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable. The first book, Hooked, is all about teaching product people how to hook us on their products. And the second book is teaching us how to unhook ourselves from maybe some of the apps that, you know, the people who read Nir's first book hooked us on. So Nir, I have a question for you. Why Hooked and then Indistractible?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Can I, can I, can I respond to that, first of all?

• 25:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sure, go ahead.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  It's not the same products.

• 25:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  I've heard this argument before, and this is something I want to talk to you about. So, so let's hear the, um, let's hear you explain it.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so Hooked was not written for the, uh, the usual suspects. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Slack, Snapchat, the video game companies. They know these techniques. That's where I learned them. That's not who Hooked was for, and that's not something that, that, uh, that I promote. I don't work for any of those companies. I never have. And what Hooked, you know, Hooked is written for the rest of us. It's written for the tech entrepreneurs who want to use the very same psychology to build healthy habits. And that's exactly what's happened, you know, since Hooked was published and we sold over half a million copies, it's, it's been utilized, the kind of companies where I put my money, where my mouth is, where I invest in these companies. These are health tech, fintech companies. Ed tech is a very big category.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  These products that are trying to make products and services that are engaging, uh, that would improve people's lives if they just use the product. Whereas Indistractible, if Hooked is about building good habits, then Indistractible is about how do we break those bad habits and keep the technology, right? We want to use the technology in a way that benefits us, that, that it serves us rather than us serving it. And I think we can have our cake and eat it too, that in fact, we can build good habits with our technology, but we can also break the bad habits. But it's not the same products, right? Nobody's trying to break their addiction to Duolingo, right? A product that uses the hook model to help people learn languages. These are, these are different products.

• 27:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Don't you think this is sort of like the good guy with the gun argument where like, um, you know, I mean, I don't think it's in the same category at all, but like gun manufacturers are like, we're making these for the good guys using the guns and the, you know, and they never really talk about the bad uses of the weapons. And yes, of course, you probably wrote Hooked with, you know, some of these good apps in mind, uh, but I don't think there's any question. You sold a half million copies of Hooked? I don't think there's any question that people use this stuff for bad. And you talk about fintech. I mean, I don't for a second think that folks at Robin Hood didn't start to think about some of the things that you talk about, like the variable rewards model, which you

• 27:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  described very similar to a casino slot machine as a way to hook people to do things like day trade. And there are probably other apps that picked up the book and used it for other stuff that people would prefer not to be addicted to. So obviously, this wasn't used entirely for virtuous purposes. Is that fair to say?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Well, look, these techniques have been around for a very long time. What I wanted to do is to put them in a version that the rest of us can use, right? The alternative is what exactly? This is the thing that I think is oftentimes left out of the conversation is that these things don't exist in a vacuum. It's a very simplistic, easy argument. But think about it, what would have happened if we didn't have a book like Hooked? Right? The bad guys who know these techniques and keep using these techniques, that's where I learned these techniques, would keep using them. Meanwhile, the rest of us who could use them for good, wouldn't have access to them. So again, what's the alternative? The alternative is that they stayed secret and locked up versus, hey, we can have a

• 28:52Speaker 01

  lot of good in the world if we can use these for patient adherence, for helping people save money in fintech, for helping people learn new languages, for ed tech. This is not trivial. We have touched the lives of millions of people by helping them build healthy habits through the technology they use. And, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. That when we know, when I write in a book like this, that these techniques can be used for good or ill, there's a whole chapter in the original version of Hooked called the morality of manipulation, right? Don't go past that. I knew that there were ethical implications. I'm not an idiot. Of course there are ethical implications, which is why I wrote an entire chapter in the book on how to use this ethically. So this is something that I wanted to get out there, that I wanted people to use for

• 29:36Speaker 01

  good, but that they also know that there are some guardrails here on how to use this stuff in an ethical manner.

• 29:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why not just write Indistractable? And instead of saying, "Everyone's going to be doing this. Let's give the secrets from the bad guys to the good guys." And there might be some collateral damage along the way. Why not just instead find, you know, figure out what you've learned about the psychology and skip Hooked and write Indistractable?

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Well, because, look, I, when I first wrote Hooked, the publisher wanted to call it "How to Build Addictive Products." And I said, "Absolutely not." Because even though it might sell better, that is not what the book is about. The book is not about how to build addictive products. The book is about how to build habit-forming products. What's the difference between a habit and addiction? An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior substance that harms the user. You would never want to build for an addiction. A habit, on the other hand, is an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. And we have good habits, many, many good habits, as well as bad habits. So Hooked is not "How to Build Addictive Products." I can always tell when someone hasn't really read the book because they say, "Oh, your book is about addicting people."

• 30:47Speaker 01

  No, I talk about the difference between addictions and habits in the book. Hooked is about how to build habits. That's a big, big difference, and it's about how to build good habits. So, you know, again, back to that wonderful Paul Verilio quote, "When you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck." If every technology, we stopped and said, "Well, we can't do that because there might be potential harm," we would never progress. Every new technology has downsides. That's part of the process of innovation. So what we do, Alex, is what we have always done as a species. When there is a new technology that has goods and bads, we do two things. We adapt and we adopt. We adapt our behaviors, which is what Indistractable is all about. It's about adapting our behavior to cope with a new reality.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  And we adopt new technologies to fix the last generation of technologies. So I work with many companies that use the methodologies in Hooked to get people unhooked from the distractions in their life. Right? So we adopt new technologies. This is what we've always done as a species, right? We adopt new technologies to fix the bad aspects of the last generation.

• 31:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt. And by the way, like, you know, even though you called Hooked Hooked and not "How to Build Addictive Products," I'm sure people built addictive products from Hooked, don't you think? After reading it.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  A hammer is a tool that can be used to build a home or bash someone's brain in.

• 32:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  So tools can be a used, misused, abused. But that doesn't mean that hammers aren't incredibly helpful. So if our standard was, hey, let's never innovate. Let's never write a book. Let's never say anything because it might be misconstrued. Well, then we'll all be bound and gagged.

• 32:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. But then I again, like, think about like the, why do Hooked first and then Indistractable second?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Because we can get the good aspects while dumping the bad aspects.

• 32:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 32:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. I think we'll have a stalemate on this one.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Well, what do you recommend? I mean, no, I can't tell if you're poking the box to actually get an answer or do you have an opinion here? What do you think?

• 32:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Personally?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that, that, um, I think Indistractable is a valuable book. And I think it's good. I think I agree with you on a lot of this stuff, right? That there's been too much of a, of a black and white discussion about what technology does to our brains. And we have been portrayed, and I've like spoke about it on the podcast before, we have been portrayed as people without any agency here. I think that's something that you and I both have a, have a bond over.

• 33:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and so I think Indistractable is good and the message is good. Hooked, I could feel like, um, I feel like you could write the manual hoping that only the good guys are going to use it. But there's, you know, without a doubt, like, it's not just a neural tradition among the bad guys who like pass it down to one another. People I'm sure read the book and, you know, thought about ways that they could, you know, create new products using these addictive techniques and, um, and use them for bad. And I think that the proliferation of these techniques, you know, throughout the industry doesn't seem, you know, net constructive to me, my perspective.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Hmm. So I want to thank you, first of all, because I think you give my work, um, way more power than maybe it deserves. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot here, but I'll tell you, Alex, that, look, the techniques in Hooked are good. They're not that good.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  They're not that good. This is not mind control. I mean, what are we talking about here? We're talking about variable rewards. Okay. Like, we're talking about making something user-friendly.

• 34:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  We're talking about improving the product with use. I mean, the techniques I talk about in Hooked are very powerful, and I appreciate that you think that they're so powerful. But I wrote the book and I'll tell you, they're not that good. They're not that good. They work. They're effective at building habits. They will not cause hijacking of brains. Nobody is getting addicted to SaaS software, Alex. Nobody is getting addicted to educational software.

• 34:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I don't think that that there's any mind hijacking going on. We've talked about this in the past.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  So what's the danger?

• 35:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think the danger is when it ends up going into things like fintech apps that get people to day trade and end up getting these variable rewards, and it makes it addictive, and they lose money from it. Now, I think that like, apps that democratize finance are good. And it pisses me off, honestly, that the everyday person doesn't get a chance to trade in the same way that an institutional investor does. That said, there's got to be a level of responsibility that these apps use so that they don't encourage people to just, you know, trade their way into debt.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  The same thing, and the same thing goes with, I think the same thing goes for gaming companies. I don't think, I mean, I like to play video games. I think they're good. But I also think that like, there's a line that needs to be drawn to, you know, make sure that people don't have their lives wasted away, you know, inside a video game.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, I don't think it overpowers them. You know, I think that like, you can walk into a casino, just to use your analogy, and decide, okay, I don't want to play the slot machine anymore. But... At the end of the day, like the casinos have these well-worn techniques because they work at scale and there are some people that will become addicted to gambling because of it. So that's sort of where my worry is.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  So here's

• 36:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  And by the way, I'm willing to change my mind. So let's talk about it and see where it goes.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  So this is what I always love about whenever I listen to you on a podcast is you are on the side of nuance and I always hear that from you. And one of the things you always say, it's like, maybe it's your catchphrase is we should take it on a case by case basis. I always hear you saying that. We should, you know, when it comes to monopoly regulation, it should be, you know, antitrust case by case basis. I always hear you saying that. And it's the same thing when it comes to this discussion, that when we have these blanket statements of, you know, people are getting addicted and it's harming people. Well, it's just never that simple. So one thing that I have proposed for years now, and in fact, this is probably been six or seven years now, I've been meeting with the tech companies to try and implore them to do. And frankly, I'm at my wits end. I think, you know, I'm

• 37:10Speaker 01

  not a big fan of government overreach and regulation, but I am in support of the regulation that would do the following, which is create a use and abuse policy. And I'll send you this article. I wrote about it seven years ago, where what I want companies to do is to say, look, for the people who are actually addicted, for the pathological addicts, they deserve protection. We have special protected classes in society, children, for example, right? There are certain things that children are not able to do. My, my 13 year old daughter can't walk into a bar and order a gin and tonic, right? She can't, she can't walk into a casino and start making bets on the blackjack table. There are certain things that children are protected from because the theory is that, you know, they're not of sound mind

• 37:52Speaker 01

  and bodies. They can't make their own decisions at that age, which is true. People who are pathologically addicted also should deserve protection. So the difference between these products and other products that can potentially addict people is that these companies know how much we use them. So an alcohol manufacturer can't know who the alcoholics are. How could they know, right? There's no direct connection. Tech companies, gaming companies, they know, right? They have personally identifiable information. So what I've been proposing for years now is to create a use and abuse policy. Give me some kind of number that over a certain number of hours a week, we're going to reach out to you. Some kind of circuit breaker is going to be tripped and we're going to reach out to you and say,

• 38:35Speaker 01

  hey, we see that you are using our product in a way that may indicate you're struggling with an addiction. Can we help? Right? I think that should be part of their policy in their service agreement, right? Some, some number of hours, 30 hours a week, 40, whatever it is, give me some kind of number. So those people do deserve special protection. The rest of us, leave us alone. We don't need that type of mollycoddling and protection. We don't need that, you know, because the vast majority of us are not addicted. So what we need to do is to look for those people who do deserve special protection, protect them, do something for those folks. But the rest of us, if you're not a child or if you're not pathologically addicted, this is not an addiction. It's simply a distraction and it is something we can do a lot about.

• 39:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think that's, that's smart. And, you know, I do think that, yeah, it comes down to the developers of these products, actually developing them in a way that treats their users well. I don't think it's been done across the board, but I like this solution.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it gives the best of both worlds, right? So that for, for most of us who just use this recreationally and once in a while, there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with Facebook or YouTube or Instagram. It's, and by the way, another thing that you've seen over the past few years that they've done, I've been very glad to see it, is that these companies are putting in tools to help us moderate our use of these products, right? You know, Apple has, uh, uh, Apple Screen Time.

• 40:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Screen Time.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Google has well-being. Instagram now has stopping cues. There's all kinds of things these tech companies are doing. Why? I mean, how many products do you know that built into the product a way to use them less? It reminds me of what happened in the automobile industry. 17 years before any law was passed that made auto manufacturers put seat belts in cars, the manufacturers themselves started to do this. Why? Because people buy safer cars. That's a feature. They like that.

• 40:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, TikTok has, I think at a certain point, if you watch enough TikTok, they'll be, they'll tell you to take a break.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  They take, yeah, exactly, a stopping cue. And I think that's fantastic.

• 40:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you have to watch a lot of TikTok in order to get that. I know, uh, I've watched a lot of TikTok in my day and encountered that.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard you want to install the app.

• 40:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  I did. I'll never install it again.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I did the same. I did the same.

• 40:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I got super addicted to it. I think that, and that one was one where I uninstalled it and didn't really feel compelled to go back. I've tried to do it with Twitter about a thousand times and I can't get rid of it. And I, I do wonder if I meet that definition of addiction where it does, does become harmful. But uh.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  The good news is that you can use the whole, maybe we can talk about this next. There's all kinds of things you can do. You don't have to necessarily uninstall every app. You know, for many of us, that's, that's why I wrote Indistractable is because I was very

• 41:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  frustrated with the tech critic perspective of, you know, just stop using the technology. The technology is melting your brain. Well, that's not really practical, right? Many of us will get fired if we don't check email. We'll get fired if we're not on Twitter. We'll get fired if we're not checking social media. It's part of our job. So I, I don't think that's a good solution. So I wanted to offer a more practical solution for how to become indistractable.

• 41:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. We'll do that after, after this break. But let's just go back to the question that we sort of got sidetracked on in the first half. Part of me, I ended up with a long-winded defense of the press and we got into our back and forth. But I'm curious why you think it is that the discussion is so black and white around this stuff? And yeah, I mean, I wrote this down ahead of time, but like, you know, sometimes tech critics seem to just take all of the ills of society and blame it directly on tech. And it isn't nuanced. So what's going on there?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  We like simple stories. I mean, I think it's, it's, we jump to the conclusions of black and white thinking and that's not real life. Again, you know, I, I don't think that tech is, is, is guilt free. There's lots of things that the tech industry has done wrong, lots and lots of things that they've done wrong. But, but that doesn't mean that there aren't, there isn't nuance here. That's the answer. It's not tech good, tech bad. It's nuance.

• 42:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. All right. Well, more of that coming up after the break. Maybe you can help me end my Twitter addiction. That would be nice. Or whatever you want to call it. My, my life being hooked to Twitter, the habit. We'll be back here on the Big Technology Podcast right after this with Nir Eyal.

• 43:03Speaker 02

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• 43:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for our third, probably final. Who knows? We're having a good time. Segment with Miryal, the author of Hooked and Indistractable. Mir, are you still in Singapore? Where are you now?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  I am, yeah, I'm in Singapore.

• 43:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so I can, I don't know if I was allowed to share that, but you can tell me if I can, if I should delete this afterwards. But you've had an interesting pandemic experience. So do you want to share a little bit about that?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, which aspect? Coming out here, you mean?

• 44:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah. What propelled you to go to Singapore? And are you going to come back?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's it been like out there?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  It's been, it's been really interesting. I have to say, I didn't, I've been here before several times on business, but never stayed for very long. And this time, we've been here for about a year and a half. And it's really grown on us. We really like it. It's a very interesting culture. And yeah, we've really taken to it.

• 44:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nice.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Well, we'll be back in the States probably next year.

• 44:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was it like a COVID hiatus? And what's this, what's the story like out there right now?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  It started as a COVID hiatus. And then we, you know, we could have gone back a long time ago, but we kind of fell in love with it since we got here. And it's a...

• 44:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 44:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, what have you fallen in love with?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  It's, you know, it's interesting seeing...

• 44:53Speaker 01

  How many of the problems that we struggle with in America, they have figured out. Healthcare is very good and much more affordable than it is in the States. I mean, I pay for health insurance here for a year, what I paid in New York for a month of health insurance for my family. Housing, you know, they have highly subsidized housing for citizens. There's virtually no homelessness. There's almost no crime. There is no graffiti. It's, uh, uh, everything runs on time. There are robots cleaning the streets. There's racial harmony day. A few days ago, they had racial harmony day where what you do as part of racial harmony day is you dress up in other people's ethnic garb.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  You know, it's essentially state sanctioned, uh, cultural appropriation. It would never happen in America, but it's just so interesting seeing. No, no, no, that would not happen. Just so interesting how many problems it seems like they have overcome. Not that it's a Shangri-La, there are of course problems here too, but it's, it's very interesting. It's, it's very tech progressive. It actually feels to me what Silicon Valley felt like when I moved out there back in 2006. A lot of optimism, a lot of opportunity. Yeah, it's, it's a really exciting place.

• 46:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you, do you think there's anything that you've seen out there? Now we're way off track, but I sort of gonna just keep asking these questions. Is there, is there anything that you've seen out there that you think of the things that you listed could be implemented here in the US? Might translate well?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  I think a lot of the things here, you know, there are always kind of excuses for why Singapore is an exception. It's a small country. It's a, it's a this, it's a that. I don't know. There's all kinds of reasons, but I think there's, you know, I think what Singapore gives us is evidence that there are political solutions to many of these problems, like with, with healthcare, for example. I mean, you go into a doctor's office here, it's very affordable. Everything starts on time. There's a pharmacy built into the doctor's office. What a, what a concept, right? In America, the doctor gives you a prescription and you gotta go to a different pharmacy. Well, here they put them all together. There's.

• 46:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, putting some of that friction might as probably with pharmaceuticals and doctors is probably a good idea in this country.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 47:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's another podcast.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  That's another podcast. Yeah. But there's, there, it is very interesting how seeing, uh, that, that, you know, these problems that we think, oh, are just endemic, uh, to, to a modern civilization don't necessarily have to be. Not that every solution translates, but I'm sure some of them would.

• 47:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why Singapore? Did you always have that on your mind? Or yeah, how did that one come up?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So honestly, I typed in on March 11th. When so we were in midtown Manhattan, if we weren't in midtown, I we probably wouldn't have left. We probably would have just stayed, but given that it was in midtown and we could see that, you know, people were not taking this seriously. And then Trump came on TV on March 11th and said, okay, we've got this Corona thing under control. We're going to cut off trade with Europe. Do you remember that's what he said? That was his big plan. We're going to cut off trade with Europe. And I said, this is not going to end well. So.

• 47:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Not to mention the mayor in New York was saying, get in your last hurrah, go to the gym.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  We went to the gym as this, as we were about to have this massive wave.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Oh, crazy.

• 48:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I remember. So yeah, what did you type in? Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  I typed in best place to go during a pandemic into Google.

• 48:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I typed in.

• 48:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Singapore came up.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Taiwan and nothing, New Zealand and the world, I think it was some website had ranked these countries on pandemic preparedness. And I remember at the time, too, we were wearing masks and people were like, you know, walking down the streets in Manhattan saying, oh, you don't need a mask. What are you wearing a mask for? And, you know, as soon as we get to Asia, everybody's wearing a mask. And one of the first things I did when I got here was type out a blog post that said, you know, the time the CDC, WHO said, don't wear masks. And I said, no, no, no, like, look, look what's going on here in Asia. Everybody's wearing a mask. We got off the plane in our connector flight in Japan. And my daughter turned to me and said, look, everybody here is wearing a mask as opposed to when we got on a on the plane in Newark, people were, this is March 11th of last year.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  People were hugging and kissing and shaking hands. Everything was fine. Barely anybody was wearing a mask. And here, everybody was. And I think actually this brings us back to this conversation on, on, on technology. You know, the time I posted this article on my blog and I posted on social media and I got so much blowback saying, don't tell people to wear masks. That's not what the CDC says. That's not the official line. And then, of course, we all know what happened a few months, a few weeks later, they changed their mind and said, yeah, you should be wearing a mask. But I think this is, this is an important part of the discussion around, you know, content moderation that, yeah, there's a lot of crazy stuff on social media. There's a lot of people who are espousing silliness. But there's also for every, for every crazy, there are ideas every once in a while that turn out to be correct.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  You know, there are people who have a different perspective that should be aired and would not otherwise be aired were not through these, these social channels.

• 49:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I agree 100%. Question, well, actually, you know, it's true. Question is, you know, what do they end up incentivizing? But this idea that alternative points of view, or that like folks shouldn't be able to talk about the origins of coronavirus and get have that stuff moderated out, I think is a little bit absurd.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally agree. And I think, I think, you know, we tend to think that it's, you know, we want moderation for the, but not for me, right? Like, only moderate the opinions I disagree with.

• 50:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  In US Congress, that's for sure. Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And when everybody's pissed off at you for posting opinions you don't like, it probably means you're doing something right. That's probably not such a bad thing if both sides say you're biased.

• 50:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I mean, you know, I think I've talked about this on the show once. I brought that up to, to Ben Smith once, who was the editor of BuzzFeed now, he's the media columnist at New York Times, that if everyone's mad at you, you might be doing something right. He's like, said, yes, or you're a troll, which I think really is the case for social media.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Could be, could be too. But this is the process. It's messy. It's, it's, you know, what is that?

• 50:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  I agree.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Voltaire quote, I'll, I don't agree with what you say, but I'll die for your right to say it. We need to remember that, you know, it's, you're part of the process of getting to truth when it comes to these murky times, murky waters that we have, that we're swimming in right now, is, yeah, some nonsense along with the, with the truth.

• 51:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I mean, that we're, well, we're going to go in a different direction now, but let's, let's do it a little bit. Don't you, you have to draw a line somewhere.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  You do.

• 51:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, even, even the founder of, of 8chan, or 8coon as it's called now, Fred Brennan is all for shutting the site down because it's become too toxic.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Facebook can't let like people, you know, spread terrorist recruitment message and child porn.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 51:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it's a matter of what Voltaire is going to die for, you know, what you can say, not that ever. You can't say anything.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

• 51:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Consequences for some of this stuff.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  And, and that's where we, we have, but we have these lines long established in jurisprudence around what you can say, right? You can't shout fire in a crowded theater, even though it's, you know, free speech. No, there are restrictions. But I think, you know, the, the debate, the stuff that people are getting angry over, you may not agree with it, but a lot of this stuff is not inciting violence. A lot of the stuff is, you know, anything that does incite violence, of course, we have existing laws that, that protect us against, you know, child pornography and inciting violence. That, those restrictions are clear. I, I think that's not what people are pissed off about right now.

• 52:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, yeah, in large part, right? It's a question of what are some of, I don't know, where are some of the, um, these fringe movements? Some of them are going to be good and tell us stuff we didn't know. Uh, some of them are going to be terrible and inspire, you know, it's death. I mean, and, and animus. And so can you, can you get the good and mitigate the bad? I think is the ultimate question about these, these companies and their content moderation policies.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I, I think, look, you know, societies, um, and, and individuals in those societies have the right to be wrong many times. Right? I, I think there are.

• 52:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I, I think, look, there's, there's, I think there's a difference between good faith efforts.

• 52:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  And intentional misinformation, right? State actors, you know, Russians putting out disinformation. That's, okay, that's not done with, with, uh, a clear conscience. That has a direct political motive. And I think that, you know, I think that should be, uh, taken care of and, and done away with. But, you know, mom and pop posting opinions that other peoples might, other people not, uh, might not agree with. I don't think that's necessarily something people need to moderate.

• 53:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, of course. And the, I mean, you know, the last person that, that, um, not last person, but the most prominent person that made that argument was Mark Zuckerberg. Right before he said that, um, Holocaust denials are, deniers are just getting it wrong versus using that lie to, um, yeah, for political purposes.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  What do you, what do you think about, I mean, this is, this has been an issue for a very, very long time, Holocaust denial. I mean, I'm in the category of, I, I do think people should be free to deny the Holocaust if they so choose. I don't think that should be, uh, banned speech per se. In Germany it is, but that's not, that's not banned in America.

• 53:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  I wouldn't ban it, um, but I also wouldn't use it as an example for people getting stuff wrong. Because I think oftentimes it's very intentional.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  And I also would say that, you know, uh, what's that phrase? Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. I don't think there's a, you don't need to throttle that kind of content, uh, to, to show to more people. You can throttle it back as opposed to throttling it forward.

• 54:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, that's become a hot, uh, a hot phrase. Personally, I think that like, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of reach, like the whole debate is somewhat misframed. Because I think that Facebook is an editor at the end of the day. And it's making choices about what we see. And so, you know, people can post on, I mean, yeah, people can post on on it all day long, but ultimately it will decide what's in the news feed, you know? And so people are saying, I, I mean, I guess it sort of is along this line of freedom of speech and freedom of reach, but i- in a, in a more clear headed view, it should be like, um, you know, Facebook is the editor and I want my story to run on A1.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're gonna see more and more of this type of content pushed into groups is my guess. I think they're gonna be stricter around the news feed. I think we already see this, right? Like Facebook 2.0 is Instagram, right? I mean, if you go on your Instagram feed, uh, it's, it's much more curated by you rather than the Facebook algorithm because it's.

• 55:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, but that's about to change.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah? How so?

• 55:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 55:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they're, they're, um, they're looking at TikTok and are quite scared of what TikTok is gonna do to them. And, uh, are now experimenting with putting, uh, posts from people you don't follow into your, um, into your feed and then more full screen video. It's working very well for TikTok to not use that follow signal as much as. And Instagram.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I, I, I, I think this is such a great illustration of how, you know, we tend to legislatively fight yesterday's war, right? We're all worried about Instagram and Facebook and meanwhile, here comes TikTok.

• 55:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think, yeah, TikTok is gonna just, I mean, crush them. I mean, this will be language that, that you'll appreciate. It's a time spent game in social media and, uh, more and more people are spending time on TikTok and that's a zero sum situation for Facebook and Instagram.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that is a huge competitive threat.

• 56:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, Nir, what got you interested in this type of stuff? I mean, what about your life made you want to, um, start thinking about the science of?

• 56:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hooking people on apps, not addicting, to use your language and then getting them unhooked.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see. So how far back do we want to go here? So, uh, I was.

• 56:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I want you to, yeah, let's, let's go as far back as, as we can.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, let's go back to my early childhood where I was clinically obese. Uh, and I think that had a big impact on me that I felt like at one point in my life, um, that food controlled me. Um, and I mean, I was, I was, I was pretty big. My, my parents took me to a fat camp and I remember going to the doctor's office beforehand and, uh, the doctor saying, okay, here's normal weight, here's overweight and here's you, you're over here on the chart, like way in that red zone. And, um, and it was a big problem for me. It was a big struggle for me and, um, it was, um, you know, working through why food seemed to control me. And if, um,

• 57:10Speaker 01

  if I'm really honest, like I, I became fascinated by how that was the case. Like, how did food seem to have such a huge control over me? And it wasn't until I realized that, um, I had to stop blaming McDonald's, uh, and stop blaming Dunkin' Donuts that, that really I wasn't eating, uh, because food was delicious. I wasn't eating because I was hungry. I was eating because there was something inside of me that I was trying to, uh, to, to, to escape emotionally. And it wasn't until I, I made that reserve, releva- revelation, sorry, that, uh, that I could do something about it. And I think that was incredibly empowering turning point for me, but I always was fascinated by the marketing, uh, tricks of the trade of how they did that to me. Uh, and then how I finally kind of

• 57:52Speaker 01

  broke out of that. Um, and, and weight is still something I, I struggle with. Uh, thankfully now at forty three.

• 57:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  You look good, man.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Thanks. Thanks. I'm now finally in the best shape of my life, but it's been a, it's been a long, long road to get here and I, I still struggle with, I still have to, uh, keep on top of it. But I think that's probably where my fascination with this started.

• 58:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  What were you trying to get away from?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Oof. How long you got? Um, look, you know, I, I think, um, whether it was, um, you know, eating because I was lonely, eating because I was bored, eating because I felt ashamed at how much I was eating. Um, all of these things would send me down this, this spiral that, you know, now doing research into this field, this is, this is pretty common, right? That when, you know, there's a big difference between overweight and obesity and, um, uh, where, where we, where we really find the, the deeper, endemic issues is where we find the root cause of the problem.

• 58:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so it sounds like there's a parallel between breaking those habits and then breaking the habits online.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, so the most important part, I think of-

• 58:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now we get to how we can unaddict people from Twitter.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  I might be talking about myself, I don't know.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should make you the case study here to figure out how to, how to help you with this. But I think that the most important aspect of becoming indistractable is understanding the internal triggers. We know the studies find that only 10% of the time that people check their phones, do they check their phone because of what we call an external trigger. So, an external trigger is a ping, a ding, a ring, anything in your outside environment that prompts you to take an action, but that's only 10% of the time that we get distracted. 10% of the time that we check our phones is because of those external triggers. So, what's the other 90%? The other 90% of the time are what we call the internal triggers. Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  So boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, stress, anxiety, this is 90% of the time that we get distracted, we are looking to escape an uncomfortable sensation. So, that has to be the first step, that whether it's too much food, too much news, too much football, too much Facebook, it doesn't matter, we will always look for a distraction, one thing or another, unless we understand what we are looking to escape from.

• 1:00:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, I guess this is a nice question to end on, or a nice sort of theme to end on. So, many people who try dieting don't succeed, and then they end up, you know, back on the horse, you know, the bag of Cheetos on, on the couch.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, and then, and then, oh, we all have, talk of personal experience, can take out the big tub of party snacks to a test that's nearly empty after getting it this weekend. But, but, so I do wonder whether there's, whether there's really hope for us to unhook ourselves or indistract ourselves from these devices, given that we are so, if it's the same sort of triggers as food and doing, you know, a lot of stuff on the phone, do we have hope to get out, get away from that?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  I think we do.

• 1:01:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  And real become, yeah, skinny users of the telephone or whatever you want to call it.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we absolutely do. And I think you're you're a test case for that. You know, when you said, hey, you know, I found that I was using TikTok and it was taking up too much time in my life and it wasn't serving me, I uninstalled it. And this is a very common truth that I uncover with many times with tech critics. You'll hear them saying something like, oh, you know, the average person can't do that. Well, what about you? How is it coming with you? Oh, yeah, yeah, I can get control of it, but everybody else can't, right? Like, the masses can't. And I don't think that's true. I think it's belittling that, in fact, if we believe we can't, right? If we tell people they're addicted, if we tell people it's hijacking their brain, if we tell them there's nothing they can do about it, guess what they do about it?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Nothing. And so this is called learned helplessness, right? That when we teach people such lies, it becomes true. And so that's why I think this narrative is so dangerous to tell people that they're powerless, that they're addicted and their brains are being hijacked. That's just not true. So it starts with taking action, with believing, first of all, that you can do something about it. I mean, lots of people do lose weight. Lots of people do moderate their use of technology. And so it starts by looking at these four key strategies that I spent five years researching into why we get distracted? Why do we do things against our better interests? And by the way, not a new problem. Plato was talking about this 2,500 years ago, right? 2,500 years before the Internet and the iPhone, people were struggling with distraction.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  It's something that has been part of the human condition. And so we start with number one, mastering those internal triggers. That's step one, having tools that we can use to know what to do when we feel discomfort, when we feel hunger, loneliness, uncertainty, fatigue, stress, anxiety. Do we look to escape these uncomfortable sensations with a distraction, with another drink, with flipping on the TV, with scrolling something, with eating something? Or do we use that discomfort to help move us forward in our goals, to move us towards traction rather than distraction? So that's step number one, mastering the internal triggers. Step number two is making time for traction. That the vast majority of people, when they say, oh, I got distracted. I didn't do what I said I was gonna do. Look at my to-do list, it's a mile long, everything's so distracting.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  I turned on the news, Donald Trump, this, that. When you say, okay, but what did you plan to do with your time? Show me your calendar. It's blank. You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. So this simple technique that psychologists have studied in thousands of peer-reviewed articles now, we know that it's called setting an implementation intention, which is just a fancy way of saying, planning out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. So simple, very few people do it, but you cannot say you got distracted unless you know what you got distracted from. So that's a big technique. And I show you how to do that according to your values, synchronizing your schedule with stakeholders in your life, your boss, your kids, your family, very, very important. The third step is the nuts and bolts of hacking back the external triggers. So this is where we go

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  step by step through email, social media, meetings, our kids, all these things can be sources of external distractions. Good news is we can hack back, and I use that term hack back, because, you know, let's, we all know that these companies are hacking our attention, right? To hack means to gain unauthorized access to something. No doubt that these tech companies as well as

• 1:04:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I thought they're not hooking into our brainstorm.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Well, they are trying to gain unauthorized access. We know that, right? Every advertiser, every media company, they're all trying to do this, right? That's their business model. I never said they weren't. Of course they are. But that doesn't mean we can't hack back. And in fact, there are all kinds of technologies we can use to change their technology. So like, for example, when I use YouTube, I have a Chrome extension called YouTube DF, totally free, doesn't cost a dime. DF stands for Distraction Free, that scrubs out all those videos you see on the right-hand side that are there to get you to keep watching and watching and watching. It disables autoplay, for example. So all these ways that we can hack their technology and they can't do anything about. All free tools that we can use, we just have to use them. And then finally, the last step is to prevent distraction with

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  pacts, where we make some kind of pre-commitment as a firewall against distraction. So it's really about these four techniques that anyone can use to become indistractable.

• 1:05:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, oftentimes we have discussions about the system and its responsibilities. And then sometimes we talk about personal responsibility and our responsibilities. And it's never going to be entirely one or the other. You know, the system will do what it work, what it does, and we'll do what we can. You know, and, you know, our society is not, not going to be able to get anywhere with just one. It needs, it takes both. What I like about you is that you wrote the book that taught the system, but also the book that teaches the responsibility. And so, you know, at least I, I, yeah, anyway, like I said, I appreciate the fact that you wrote Indistractable. It's a good book.

• 1:06:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and I do think, you know, your, your core message is so important, which is that we can criticize tech all we want, but if we don't think about ways that we can take this stuff into our own hands, we're going to be in trouble. So I appreciate you doing that.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, I, just to, just to build on that, you know, if, if you hold your breath and you wait for Washington to fix the problem, you wait for the tech companies to fix the problem, you're going to suffocate, right? Why would we wait? Why is this only, the only discussion we have is about big bad tech and what they're doing to us? Why don't we also talk about, wait a minute, what, how about turning off notifications? Like, what, it's simple things that any of us can do, but we never talk about that stuff because it's just no fun. I want it to be the-

• 1:06:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course, but it, it's also that when you talk about what the tech companies can do, they can have a greater impact at scale by making some changes. Same thing with the food companies, by the way, since we're on that topic. You know, they engineered foods to a bliss point where you put, you pack as much sugar and salt and fat into it to make people feel good, but not feel kind of gross inside. And that bliss point will get you, you know, eating more and more and more. And so we should definitely focus on like- How a personal weight loss journey and like the secrets for the individual to be able to fight back against that. But if we start to, you know, if we spend time on criticizing, you know, the food companies or the tech companies, that's not a waste of time either.

• 1:07:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because you can end up helping lots of people at scale if you, you know, try bring some light to the negative things that they're doing to try to get us hooked to their products or their food. And ultimately, both discussions are worth having, individually and the system.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  I would agree. And there's some, you know, there's lots of problems with tech, whether it's, you know, their monopoly status, perhaps, or content moderation, lots of stuff. When it comes to this particular challenge, I mean, where my area of expertise on, on whether products are addictive, whether they're too engaging, that, that I think I can pretty conclusively say that this is not something that the companies are going to solve for us, or that we want them to solve for us. Because again, they are designed to be engaging. That's why we buy them. We want them to be interesting, right? We Netflix is never going to start making crappy shows that are not entertaining, right? It is up to us in large part.

• 1:08:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you, but you did produce a solution that they can solve for us.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Sure. For the addicted people. Right.

• 1:08:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know. But it's also like, let's, I, I think that there should be a greater realization of these techniques that they're using to hook people. And personally, you know, I don't know, stand on the merits, don't do these tricks to, you know, play with people's psychology in order

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  of coming back. I don't think it's tricks, you know, variable rewards. That's not a trick, you know, what makes romance romantic is variable rewards. What makes a book fun to read is variable rewards. Sports, spectator sports, you want to talk about addiction. You want to talk about going to a bar during a big game and try and turn off the TV. You will not leave with your life.

• 1:09:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:09:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  But the example that you give when you try to talk to people about why they should put this in their apps isn't about, you know, sports games. Maybe you do talk about sports a little bit. It's about a pigeon that can't stop hitting this bar in order to get food. And I don't really like the idea. I mean, if you want to do that to a lab animal, fine. But I don't really like the idea of of prioritizing that inside an app. Otherwise, I don't know, maybe you wouldn't have, maybe, maybe the book wouldn't be such a necessary read if this new book wouldn't be such a necessary read if we had designers that actually focused on making stuff interesting versus turning us into those pigeons in the food.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  I think that's what that is what makes them interesting. I mean, that is why we read the books. That is why we watch the TV shows. That is why we watch the sports game. It's all about variable rewards. I mean, and this, this isn't, you know, it's not a trick. It is, you know, something when something is variable, mysterious, that's what makes it interesting. And that's, that's can be a very good thing, too. That doesn't mean it's it's nefarious, per se.

• 1:10:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  You don't, you don't see any difference, though, between like a book with like a short chapter in the middle or a game, a baseball game, where like your team gets like nine runs in an innings, in an inning, and an app developer, you know, tracking all of the different data that you use in optimizing to get you, you know, through these variable reward model, optimizing to get you using the app at the, you know, at the maximum amount of engagement, maximum amount of time.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Do I see a difference?

• 1:10:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't there a bit of a difference? Where like, you know, the, the tech, the, I mean, the techniques of baseball, the rules of baseball, for instance, are very different from a casino, very different from an app using these variable rewards incentives in order to get people, you know, back and different from what the person does to the pigeon.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  You think that when you watch a sports game on TV that that's not hyper optimized for all kinds of crazy psychology around identity, around tribal mechanics, around, you know, all the investment that people make in their teams? I mean, it's if an alien came down to earth and watched this crazy behavior we have of rooting for people we've never met just because they wear our team colors and the money we spend, the obsession people have. I mean, I think this is part of my beef is that we only see the new stuff as dangerous. The stuff that's been around before we were born, oh, that's commonplace, nothing to be worried about. You think people don't spend their way too much money on on sports memorabilia and all the mumbo jumbo and crap that is associated with that kind of stuff? Of course they do.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  And and look, here's the here's the crazy part. Somehow, when it's my obsession, that's okay. Right? Telling my family to go to hell because I have to turn on my television so that I can watch a sports game live and I don't care because I gotta watch my team, that's okay. But, oh, I want to play a video game? Oh, that's evil. That's rotting your brain. Come on. It's past time and there's nothing wrong with either of them. It's about to what degree? It's as you say, it's about case by case. If you if you, you know, ignore your family and don't have your responsibilities to them because you're obsessed with watching sports, hey, that's maybe that's a problem. The same would go for social media or or a video game. It's not necessarily about the behavior itself, it's about the consequences about that behavior.

• 1:12:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, of course. But I also like, I don't know, I think that everyone does defenses. It's a little bit wanting, you know, from my perspective, and I think there is a difference between, you know, watching, watching a baseball game and, you know, being drawn back to Robin Hood day after day to day trade, when it's clear that, you know, a vast majority of day traders end up losing.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I mean, day trading wasn't invented by Robin Hood. Day trading has been around for a very, very long time. It's a wonderful way for those people to lose money.

• 1:13:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is the whole point about like when you use these techniques to make it more addicting, that's when I see the issue. So yeah, we'll go case by case.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Exactly, case by case. So when Robin Hood, so Robin Hood actually approached me to work with them, and I backed off because I think some of their tactics were not ethical.

• 1:13:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  So they did read your book.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  They did, they did.

• 1:13:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's how they found you.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. In fact, one of the founders approached me in a bar back when it wasn't called Robin Hood. It was called Cash Cat or Fat Cat, something like that before it was called Robin Hood. And he read my blog even before my book was published. And I met with those guys for sure. And I was always kind of a little uncomfortable with whether they would do the right thing. And look, they've pushed the boundaries and they've done too much. And then regulators have come in and said, hey, you can't do these things because it's unethical.

• 1:13:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  A user who killed himself after he, you know, thought that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So obviously, I mean, you can't, like I said before, you can't take one example and like the COVID thing and why tech is good, you can't take one example and say that's why Robin Hood is bad. But it does seem like these techniques can be used for evil and or for nefarious purposes. Let's not go all the way to evil.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Totally. Every tool can be abused, misused as well.

• 1:14:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure. Well, Mira, thank you so much for joining. It was a great conversation as always. Great talking with you. Hope you'll come back. What's the next book gonna be?

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Oh, good question. I don't know quite yet. It'll be a few years probably.

• 1:14:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Sounds good. Well, looking forward to having you on when that comes out. And hopefully when you're back in New York, you and I can get together and keep up the discussion.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  That sounds great. Thanks so much, Alex.

• 1:14:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Thanks for coming on. The books are Indistractable and Hooked. If you haven't read them yet, go ahead and grab them and see what we've been talking about. See whose side you fall on, although I think there's a lot more common ground between you and I than maybe I led on over the course of this conversation, but exciting nonetheless. Well, thanks so much to Nate Guatney, our editor and Red Circle for hosting and selling the ads and most importantly to you, the listener, the show would be nothing without you and I appreciate it. We'll include some variable incentives so that you'll be coming back more and more. All right. Well, see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. That'll do it for us here on the, on the show this week. Take care.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

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