For many years, I I sat down to work every morning, hours later realizing that I felt exhausted but didn’t do much. Instead of writing, I spend my time texting, emailing, and mostly aimlessly scrolling through news sites, blogs, and social media. Every click triggers another. I tried to regain control using an app called Freedom, which blocked my computer from going online for a certain amount of time. It helps sometimes, especially when I’m getting close to a deadline. Sometimes it doesn’t. But trying to control work hours is only part of the struggle. I always feel the irresistible urge to pull out my phone at all times. At that time, I blamed myself. After all, I’m the girl who spent hours playing video games in college. But something happened in 2015 that made me realize that something much bigger had gone awry.
It was a Saturday evening when my family and I went to a friend’s house for dinner. Their 11-year-old son is playing with his parents’ iPad. When we arrived, his parents asked him to deliver it and join the other kids. The boy at first refused to hand it over. He then angrily tries to snatch the device back from his mother’s hand, reverting to a toddler’s cry for the device. Over the course of a long evening, he used every manipulative tool in his power to regain control of the iPad. As I witnessed the despair of his parents, I recalled a family conflict that had occurred at my parents’ house a few years earlier. At that time, doctors diagnosed my father, a heavy smoker, with emphysema. My father could have avoided the painful final years of his life, on resuscitation, by quitting smoking when he was diagnosed with the disease. He refused. We tried our best to counter his decision by taking his cigarettes away. But like my friend’s son, my father reacted with unusual anger, using every means possible to get his pack back.
That day, I began to see how our present relates to our past. The past can answer one of today’s most troubling problems. Why, although many report from Silicon Valley whistleblowers revealing that tech companies are using manipulative designs to prolong our time online, do we feel personally responsible? Why do we still blame ourselves and keep looking for new self-help methods to reduce time online? We can learn from the past because in this case, tech companies didn’t innovate. Instead, the tech industry has manipulated us into an old book, compounded by other powerful industries, including the tobacco and food industries.
When the tobacco and food industries faced accusations that their products harmed consumers, they defended themselves by upholding the powerful American social symbol of self-choice. and personal responsibility. This means emphasizing that consumers are free to choose and, therefore, responsible for the results. Smokers and their families have sued the tobacco industry for the devastation caused by smoking, including lung cancer and premature death. But, for decades, they haven’t won because the tobacco industry has successfully argued that they chose to smoke and therefore should be held accountable for the outcome. The food industry uses an identical strategy. When a group Teenagers sue McDonald’s because they became obese and diabetic after regularly eating at McDonald’s, McDonald’s successfully made the same claim. It argues that no one is forcing teenagers to eat at McDonald’s, and since it’s their choice, McDonald’s is not responsible for any ramifications to health. The food industry has gone further. They have successfully lobbied for legislation known as the “cheese sandwich law” or more formally the Fair Consumer Act. Under these laws, food manufacturers and suppliers cannot be held legally responsible for consumer obesity. Why? As the law states that this will promote a culture of personal responsibility among consumers, it is important to promote a healthy society.
Tobacco and food companies don’t stop at directly arguing that their consumers are responsible. They also offer new products to help them make better choices. In the 1950s, researchers published the first studies showing a link between smoking and lung cancer. In response, tobacco companies asked consumers to choose a new, healthier product: filter cigarettes. They advertised it as “just what the doctor ordered”, claiming that it removed nicotine and tar. Smokers went for it. What they didn’t know, however, was that to compensate for the flavor that filter cigarettes took away, companies were using stronger cigarettes to produce as much nicotine and tar as brands without filters. Here, too, the food industry followed suit. It also provides tools to reinforce that its consumers are in control. Faced with criticism for the low nutritional value of their products, Food manufacturers add products called “Eating Right” and “Choosing Healthy”. Despite giving consumers the illusion that they are making better choices, diet product lines are often not much of an improvement over the original products.
The tech industry has adopted this strategy by appealing to our deeply rooted cultural beliefs about individual choice and responsibility. Tech companies directly do this in the face of accusations that they are addictive to users. When the US Federal Trade Commission assessed the restriction on the use of loot boxes, a common addictive feature in video games, video game makers Debate: “No one is forced to spend money on a free-to-play video game. They choose what they want to spend and when they want to spend and how they want to spend.” But the tech industry also does it indirectly by providing us with tools to enhance the illusion of our control. They give us tools like Apple’s Screen Time, which tells us how much screen time we spend. They also allow us to restrict time on certain apps, but we can then override these restrictions. We can choose to put our phones on “do not disturb” or “focus time”. We can set Instagram to remind us to take breaks. However, screen time continues to increase. These tools fail, because like “filter cigarettes” and “healthy choice” food products, they are not intended to solve the problem. Tech companies haven’t gotten rid of the addictive designs that prolong our time online. The goal of these products, also known as digital happiness tools, is to blame us, for our lack of success in the face of devices and apps that entice us to continue manipulatively.
