When the first iPhone hit the U.S. stores on 9 June 2007, it cost $500. Yet six million units were sold before the next model arrived. Eight years later, in 2015, a total of 1.4 billion smartphones were in the hands of users scattered across the globe.¹ That same year, the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication² published a study in which a group of iPhone users were asked to complete word puzzles. During the exercise, research assistants called their personal phones at erratic intervals and for a varying number of rings; the users could hear their phones ring but were prevented from answering. The objective was to measure whether and to what extent anxiety levels were triggered when someone is blocked from answering a ringing phone.

Not surprisingly, this frustrating exercise caused an increase in heart rate and blood pressure for most of the subjects. They also reported unpleasant feelings, including anxiety. These results may seem predictable; who wouldn't be annoyed in the above scenario? But the study embedded another measure into the test that helps explain why we feel iPhone separation anxiety. The researchers inquired about the subjects' sense of “extended self,” a concept that dictates that humans' overreliance on a given object ultimately leads us to identify the object as an extension of ourselves, in this case the iPhone. So, if you're cut off from your iPhone, it's on a psychological continuum with, say, having one of your fingers cut off (although not overtly physically painful). Interestingly, in 2015, the experiment centered exclusively on phone calls. Obviously if the same experiment were done today, the paradigm would shift from phone calls to notifications and other alerts that are signaled by a visual effect, a buzz or other sounds.

Is this any different from previous changes in society like television, radio, pop music or even comic books? We would argue that yes, what we experience here is different and not least because we are seeing it on a much larger scale than ever before. As we've discussed, smartphones have been adapted more quickly and more widely than any other technological advance in history. This means they reached critical cultural mass before a pilot group of users could report some preliminary indications of negative (or positive) effects—as the law would have required in the case of the pharmaceutical or automotive industry. In the twentieth century, television and radio experienced a rapid adoption after an initial seeding, but these devices were both immobile and passive, two qualities that limited their diffusion throughout daily life. (Those who remember early cordless phones may recall feeling rather dizzy at the prospect of being able to walk around the house while talking to your friends—it was that radical.) This all changed with the arrival of the smartphone and subsequently tablets. These devices could be carried around, touched, looked at and listened to at all times, and this laid the foundation for the most powerful human-to-gizmo mind–body meld ever seen in history. Through this development—and probably based on a gradually more and more extended “iSelf,”—smartphones like the iPhone have slowly become no longer just a device, but a digital DNA chart of you, your interests and—most importantly—what captures your attention a large percentage of your time.

The Human Information Factory

A 2015 report by Microsoft Canada stated that the human attention span had now dropped to merely eight seconds—that's one second less than that of a goldfish. This claim made headlines all over the world.^3,4,5 Fortunately, however, this statistic was a total fabrication that was soon debunked—although by then it had already spread around the globe like wildfire. The incident is worth noting because although not true, the average person found it perfectly believable based on their own observations of life in the digital age.^6,7 And even if the goldfish story didn't hold water, it's believable for a reason: our brains are indeed that vulnerable.

The Limited Working Memory

Look at this picture for a few seconds. (Have a paper and pen ready.)

Now look elsewhere and write as many of the figures as you can on a piece of paper. Chances are good that you'll only remember 5–7 out of the 13 possible symbols. We owe this lousy batting average to our brain's meagre working memory capacity. Like a relay station, working memory temporarily holds information for further processing.⁸ What this means in today's world is that your working memory is not just continually full but chronically backed up. It also means that it never gets to rest. We don't yet know the long-term consequences of this added burden placed on brain function. Requiring additional resources means they must be drawn from somewhere … but at what price to the brain's long-term overall function? Stay tuned ....

The Sorting Task

Another important human frailty is our limited ability to filter the onslaught of information. Consider for a moment how you experience the world around you. You look at it, you feel it, you hear it, you smell it or you taste it. But how much information does the brain actually receive through the senses—and how much of that information is actually needed? Neuroscientist Manfred Zimmermann has estimated that our total capacity for perceiving or taking in information through our sensorium is about 11 million bits per second.⁹ And, as you recall, most of this information—almost 10 million bits per second—reaches our brain through our eyes, with the rest being transferred mostly from our hearing and lastly from the three remaining senses. However, only 40 bits (out of 10 million) is useful—according to your subconscious filter, anyway. And that just happens to be the amount of information that surfaces to consciousness. The question is, then, just how good is the brain's filter at separating the good bits from the useless ones? Is it really letting the important stuff through the autopilot and into your conscious thought?

Information Processing

Our sense organs transform external stimuli into electrochemical signals that travel along nerve pathways to our brain. The brain in turn memorizes and stores the information for long-term access. But how does all of this happen? Let's imagine that a certain bundle of signals has reached your brain—for example, let's say you're walking past a rose garden. Before the brain can register the scent and image as “roses,” it must run an elaborate processing and translation task. First, it must actively select the most important “channel” to focus attention on, in this case your nose. But this requires a trade-off, and it must at the same time deselect or become defocused to irrelevant signals from other sensory channels. Imagine you are reading a book when construction noise starts up outside. Your first move will probably be to look up to scan your surroundings for a threat (we've been wired like that since prehistoric times). Seeing no threat, you return to your book. In essence, what you just did was shift between channels, something we do all the time without being particularly conscious of these shifts. Once a channel is selected, rough processing begins and the brain delegates responsibility for finer processing to the appropriate components.

This occurs through a process called “encoding.” Encoding enables the brain to match incoming signals to previous experiences that may indicate appropriate responses based on past events. If there's no direct match, your brain moves on to the next best thing, namely, assumptions or even prejudices associated with a given piece of information. This encoding phase of information processing is probably the most crucial one in the chain because it has such a big impact on our understanding and perception of the world. Finally, all of the recently connected dots are stored in your short-term memory,¹⁰ momentarily making it possible for you to recall it. And power of recall is obviously essential if you're going to access the previously digested information as a basis for the appropriate response to a stimulus, whether it's a meaningful reply to a question, or stepping on your brake pedal when you see a red light.

Think of the various stations that information must pass through on its way to consciousness—where it can stimulate action—as train tracks. Now you can easily see the junctures at which those mythical train robbers can hold up the mail and switch letters from your loved ones for their own product pitches. And today's marketers know that the brain is most vulnerable when overloaded. This is also why the idea that you can multitask with the same part of the brain is a myth. You can, of course, drink water and listen to music at the same time, but the moment you try to listen to two people simultaneously, things start falling apart; your cognitive processing can only do one thing at a time and trying to multitask comes at the cost of misinterpreting, missing or failing to properly store incoming signals.

In this way, you can see how the smartphone could be viewed as a “weapon of mass distraction.” And it seems that few of us have any real idea how attached we are to our devices. A 2015 British study carried out by a group of psychologists showed two surprising facts: (1) that young adults used their phones an average of five hours a day, and 2) that the actual use was in fact roughly twice as much as they estimated themselves, indicating behavior that is automatic to the point of being below the threshold of consciousness. “This suggests that we urgently need to research into the psychodynamics of these technologies, in terms of the emotional—and possibly psychopathological—function they are serving in people's lives,”¹¹ remarked the British psychologist Richard House, who researches the impact of technology on human experience.

Would You Dare to Be a Passenger in a Car Driven by a Distracted You?

In 2012, the U.S. National Safety Council released a white paper entitled “Understanding the distracted brain—why driving using hands-free cell is risky behavior.”¹² Using the information processing model mentioned above, the white paper made the case that distracted driving is just as bad as speeding or drunk driving. The Council argued that while most “hands-free” devices do indeed help drivers keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road they do not eliminate “cognitive distraction,” which is the term for a driver “taking his mind off the road.” Researchers have identified a phenomenon known as “reaction-time switching costs,”¹³ and have found that talking on your cell phone while driving, even if the phone is hands-free, increases your reaction time. What this really implies is when the brain is overloaded with information, it starts missing beats. And this has a critical impact on our ability to react appropriately. The report also concludes that we probably haven't even scratched the surface in terms of understanding the relationship between subconscious cognitive distraction and accidents.

Excuse Me, Do You Have a Minute?

Driving a car is one thing, but how does distraction manifest in a broader field of activity, such as the workplace? A 2013 Michigan State University study asked participants to perform a sequence-based task on a computer to simulate office work. Researchers found that three-second interruptions doubled the error rate and four-and-a-half second interruptions tripled the number of errors. Why did the error rate spike up so dramatically? As lead researcher Dr. Erik Altmann observed: “The answer is that the participants had to shift their attention from one task to another. Even momentary interruptions can seem jarring when they occur during a process that takes considerable thought.”¹⁴ But that's not all. University of California Irvine researchers shadowed workers on the job, studying their productivity.¹⁵ They found that even after a distraction has subsided and a person is mentally ready to get back on track, there's a time-lag you need to overcome first. The same results of distractions being connected to increased error rates were also found in an Australian study where nurses were observed while they prepared and administered a total of 4271 medications to 720 patients in Australian hospitals. The researchers concluded that each interruption resulted in a 12.7% increased risk of a medication error and that the error rate tripled when nurses were interrupted six or more times while doing their tasks.¹⁶

Smartphones and Feelings

In many respects, using your smartphone while driving is like driving slightly drunk. You feel okay, but you are actually slower to respond to critical situations. And that is not all. People with unhealthy digital habits may well find themselves using their smartphone rather like alcohol—as a way to manage feelings. In her doctoral thesis¹⁷ British sociologist Jane Vincent demonstrated how we use the cellphone to mediate emotions and how this colors our perceptions. She found that:

Within this group of respondents, the mobile phone not only had become a key component in their daily emotional management of their everyday lives, but also that mobile phone use had a profound effect on sense of self. In this context, mobile phones are used extensively to manage the presentation of self, as well as the emotional highs and lows of relationships and family commitments.¹⁸

In other words, people now seem to use their smartphones to also manage more complex things such as relationships and emotional issues. Thus, it has evolved far beyond its original station as a practical tool: “It is also a repository of the emotional memories with which respondents interact.”¹⁹

Research psychologist Larry Rosen has spent 30 years studying the impact of technology on 50 000 children, teens and adults in the United States and 24 other countries. He concludes that connecting virtually is not the same as real-world bonding:

Our real and virtual worlds certainly overlap, as many of our virtual friends are also our real friends. But the time and effort we put into our virtual worlds limit the time to connect and especially to communicate on a deeper level in our real world. With smartphone in hand, we face a constant barrage of alerts, notifications, vibrations and beeps warning us that something seemingly important has happened and we must pay attention.²⁰

Jean Twenge is another researcher who has also spent years uncovering the impact of technology on humans. In an article in The Atlantic, she concluded:

The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers' lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone.²¹

A Quick Pit-Stop Before Heading into the Land of Dragons

In the next couple of chapters, we will take you on a journey into the world of addictive software design, mind hacks, micro-segmentation, remarketing and retargeting, shopping cart abandonment reactivation, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) approaches, scarcity approaches, orchestrated tribalism, cognitive bias, and more. We think you will be surprised to see the level of digital manipulation that is being used against you—and having read the preceding chapters you now have the knowledge you need to understand what sort of biological and psychological mechanisms these approaches are hacking and reorchestrating to capture your attention and keep it captured for as long as they can.

But before we do so let's just take a moment to recap the highlights of what you have read so far.

1. The use of smartphones and social media is sweeping the world at an unbelievable pace. Two-thirds of the global population has access to smartphones and nearly half of the global population uses social media of some sort.
2. Tech Titans such as Google, Apple and Facebook are at the forefront of an industry that is as large as the total economy of many countries. Most of the players in this economy are engaged in a battle for your attention.
3. Your attention has become a global commodity being sold to advertisers that want to sell you goods, services, entertainment and so on.
4. Around 70 000 years ago something happened to kick-off an extraordinary change in the human species—our potential to think, share, analyze, create and imagine all came together to create the animal we are now. An animal that sits at the top of the food chain, dominates the world and has, for all practical purposes, won the evolutionary race against all other species.
5. You and your brain are in large part the result of an evolutionary development that has provided your forebears with a set of tools and routines that allowed you to become a social animal. You are by nature good at interacting with others, reading their emotions, building trust and having empathy for their plight. You even have hormones that help regulate social interaction and promote bonding and togetherness.
6. Your brain, and with it your consciousness and your ability to be attentive, is a “work in progress.” The parts of your brain that manage autonomous functions and emotional reactions and responses are relatively old. The parts of your brain that let you learn things, solve problems, speak and do mathematics are fairly new. The two systems are connected and work together on many different levels to allow you to function and to think and to be.
7. Your cognitive processes operate in one of two different modes: slow or fast (conscious reasoning or autopilot). The slow mode requires a large amount of energy to run but allows you to reason, to figure things out and to learn new skills. The fast mode is impulsive and operates mainly on the basis of subconscious processing of past experience. It takes effort to engage the slow mode while the fast mode can be triggered easily by any number of factors.
8. As the newer parts of your brain evolved to allow you to tackle more complex tasks there was a need to mediate and move information back and forth between the old and the new system. This mediator is what we now call “consciousness” and the self-awareness you feel may simply be an unintentional side effect of the need for mediation between cognitive processes. Some scientists argue that this self-awareness while having a biological foundation cannot be described just as biology but must be considered a thing in-and-of itself.²²
9. The consciousness you are experiencing (or think you are experiencing) is in reality a fragile and fairly strange construct. Parts of your perception of reality appear to be time-shifted by about half a second to allow the older and the newer parts of your brain to operate in sync. And contrary to the popular idea of consciousness as being some sort of agent of volition and free will, your consciousness may to a large extent simply be a framework designed to mediate cognitive processes in which there is no “real consciousness” as you probably understand it, when you think about yourself. However, it's also possible that while consciousness may be the result of a number of subconscious processes it can still be shaped by itself and therefore we do have free will and volition.
10. There are “cracks” in our armor that allow outside distractions to engage internal cognitive processes in ways that are not part of the original set of stimuli our brain was designed for. It would appear that we tend to think of and respond to tools we use often (like smartphones) as part of our body and there are many studies to show that being distracted by technology has associated costs in “real life.” Among the primary issues identified are “technoference,” the consequences of attention that should have been placed in a specific task or relation (such as child-rearing) being co-opted by technology. Another issue is “switching costs”—the fact that shifting attention back and forth between systems or between your phone and the real world has costs in terms of precision, ability to concentrate and how quickly you can respond appropriately to danger.

So there you have it: you and your brain are a marvelous, but also somewhat fragile, construction that uses a large number of surprisingly strange processes to function—many of which are subconscious and take place without your self-aware consciousness knowing about or being able to interfere with them. You are a very bright, flexible construct designed to think and reason on your own as well as to interact and engage with others to build relationships, tribes and societies and so on—but at the same time this wonderful construction also has some serious flaws that can be exploited by external triggers. Flaws, that allow particular types of interaction design, storytelling, triggers and so forth to “break into” the space between your conscious self and your subconscious autonomous systems and which can be used to manipulate, seduce and coerce you into exhibiting behaviors that make profits for tech companies, but which may not be all that good for you.

Exactly how that works is what the next couple of chapters are about.