Tristan Harris is “an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities.” He spent three years with Google before founding Time Well Spent, a non-profit initiative that, among other things, aims to catalyze a change among technology companies through “policy recommendations to protect minds from nefarious manipulation.” In “Distracted in 2016? Reboot Your Phone with Mindfulness,” Jan. 27, 2016, Harris suggested seven tips by which individuals can take control of their smartphones. These tips are meant to “minimize compulsive checking and phantom buzzes, minimize fear of missing something important, minimize unconscious use, minimize ‘leaky’ interactions (‘leaking out’ into something unintended), and minimize unnecessary psychological concerns generated by the screen.” Following is an excerpt from this article: “We live in an Attention Economy. That means every app and website is trying to get you to come back and spend more time. Companies literally have teams of people called Growth Hackers, whose job is to invent new reasons (notifications) and new persuasive tactics to bring you back. I know this because I studied with the lab at Stanford that invented many of these principles. That’s why we wake up to screens that are inundated with notifications. Gloria Mark one of the leading researchers on ‘interruption science’ at UC Irvine, has shown that unrelated external interruptions cost us 23 minutes before we resume focus. And it appears that the more interruptions we get, the more it increases our internal clock rates for self-interruption--put simply, the more we get interrupted, the more we interrupt ourselves. The only answer is to have our devices interrupt us less by turning off notifications” (“Distracted in 2016? Reboot Your Phone with Mindfulness,” Jan. 27, 2016, tristanharris.com). (Friday Church News Notes, October 12, 2018, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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