John Walt

Understanding the new world that shapes our thinking.

"Life has been taught to us upside down and backward." - Larry Mills

In January 2020, I felt led to stop reading, watching, or listening to the news. My plan at the time was to unplug for a year. It was the perfect year to ignore what the pundits and fearmongers had to say. While most of the world was freaking out, I was not. You might say that is irresponsible; how could you know what is going on, particularly with Covid and the election? I learned that important news travels fast by word of mouth.

I haven't read or watched the news in five years now, and yet nothing major has happened in the world that I have felt I wasn't aware of within a few hours of the news breaking. The truth is most news is not actually giving you actionable information. It is just stealing your time, attention, and emotions. I have read extensively in books and reports about the effects and causes of most of the major events of the last five years. I do believe we need to be informed citizens, but that is not what most news outlets and publications are helping people to become.

I quit using social media around the same time, maybe a year or so earlier, I honestly can't remember. I took all that time and poured it into reading more books and creating more time to think. I would like to share with you how unplugging from content feeds impacted my life, but first, I want to share what I have learned about how media and technology affect our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships. You might end up wanting to unplug a little bit yourself.

Our world is flying upside down, and we don't even know it. What and how we think is shaped by everything around us and mostly without our awareness. From the technology we use to the content we consume and the social groups we are a part of, all of it influences what and how we think. This isn't just my opinion; it's a highly researched fact. We are far more influenceable than we would like to think.

Everyone wants your attention

Our world is now built around technology that can track and manipulate us. Tech companies build psychological profiles on everyone based on behavior and interests with the purpose of improving their ability to get more of our attention. In doing so, they have amassed incredible wealth. The combined wealth of Google (now Alphabet) and its founders rivals the GDP of major economies like France, India, or the United Kingdom. It has surpassed the GDP of all but the top 6-7 economies in the world.

This year, one of the things I read a lot about was the human history of over-harvesting natural resources. I didn't intend to study it, but I came across this topic in other history books I was reading. I learned about the near extinction of the bison; in just 55 years, 40 million bison were killed in the American West. I was fascinated to learn that whalers in the 19th and 20th centuries managed to kill nearly 1 million sperm whales, cutting the global population in half. Passenger pigeons were once the most abundant bird in North America, numbering 3 to 5 billion. Within just a few decades, they were extinct, primarily from commercial hunting. Hundreds of thousands of whitetail deer were killed for just their skin by long hunters in the mid-1700s. This mass killing is one of the reasons settlers had to push farther and farther west to find land that wasn't overhunted. There is a clear connection in my mind between hunting, whaling, and technology companies.

Humans have a history of over-harvesting natural resources for money. If there is a chance to build wealth, then our psychology seems to blind us to the future impact of our actions. The natural resource tech companies are mining is human attention and they have done it on a global scale with complete disregard for its impact on each of us and the world as a whole. This is an important topic because the effects of technology that can track and manipulate us have expanded to touch almost all areas of our lives; it is a new reality.

The natural resource tech companies are mining is human attention.

How they do it

Social media platforms are designed to hold your attention as long as possible. Facebook copied the gambling industry's methods to help them optimize their interface and algorithm to make their app more addictive. That began about 15 years ago when the "Like" button was a novel breakthrough because it caused dopamine hits to fire off in our brains and kept us coming back for more. Fast forward to the present, and now, at every major digital platform, we have teams of psychologists working with teams of developers getting paid millions of dollars working to get seconds more of your time.

In 1998, BJ Fogg founded the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University. The lab focused on studying how computing technology (phones, computers, websites, apps and other digital products) could be designed to influence human behavior and beliefs. The lab's work has had a significant impact on the tech industry, many of its students are behind some of the most influential tech companies in the world. Many of the ideas that have come out of the lab are now in the technology products we use every day. For instance, when you post on any social platform for the first time and quickly get likes and reshares, that is the algorithm giving you immediate positive feedback so that you will keep using the app. This simple idea was taught to the co-founder of Instagram, Mike Krieger, at the Persuasive Technology Lab and became a central part of Instagram's massive growth.

I've studied this in depth over the years. There is one thing that makes social media money: eyeballs. The more time you spend on their app the more money they make. This leads them to be obsessed with data collection because the more data they have, the better they can learn to hold people's attention. Every little part of every social media platform at this point is specifically and intentionally designed to suck you in and keep you coming back for more by playing on weaknesses in human psychology.

There is a saying in tech that "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product." For years data has been the name of the game for most major tech companies. Mountains of data helped platform designers understand how to make their products more addictive, but more importantly, it helped them sell better-targeted advertising based on behavior patterns and interests. Data-driven technology is now called surveillance capitalism.

Where this is headed

Now the battle has moved from just behavioral data to brain data. Wearable devices (like smartwatches and rings) give companies new insights into what happens in our brains when we engage with different content, go places and participate in different activities. Now, AI can instantly process vast amounts of data about you and deliver highly targeted ads without ever having to consult a human. Since it is self-learning, it is constantly training itself to improve its algorithms and recommendations. AI and brain data collection are still in their infancy, but what is certain is that the evolution of addictive apps, targeted advertising, targeted content, and engineered content is going to see exponential growth in a very short period of time, and it's only going to get faster. Where that will take us is unknown, but one thing is certain: when we engage with vast amounts of content, it influences our thoughts and behaviors.

Mining for human attention

News, social media, and most forms of entertainment are the machines that now shape how a generation thinks. I know I sound like a crazy old person saying that, but you have to look at the business model behind these machines and the research about their effects on us. News gets paid for eyeballs; the more people that read or watch and the more time they do it is the primary metric that drives revenue for news outlets. Now, content creators of all kinds get paid for the same thing as major media companies - time and attention.

Media and content creators are not trying to be evil, but at the end of the day, they have to drive revenue. So they end up using the feedback loops built into technology platforms to learn what people pay attention to so they can make more of it. This affects everything from the visuals to the language, delivery and speed. Media outlets want to suck you in and keep your attention as long as possible; they want you to read and watch the news all the time. It is easy to see that older and younger generations are glued to their devices for different kinds of content, but it is all driven by the same underlying mechanisms that manipulate people to give more of their attention.

Now film companies are leveraging data from streaming platforms to make more of the kinds of movies and shows that people like to watch. Watch next recommendations on Netflix and every other streaming platform are based on past viewing and designed to get you to watch one more movie or show. That’s also why they keep shortening the time between when one movie ends and the next one automatically starts. For years porn companies have led streaming platforms in user data mining, all with the purpose of giving you more of what you want to watch so you will spend more time watching. With so many companies competing for your time and attention, creating addictive content has become a necessary part of doing business for media companies and content creators.

The Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 was 'brain rot'. It refers to a perceived deterioration of mental or intellectual capabilities, often attributed to excessive consumption of low-quality online content.

Most media companies, apps, content platforms and content creators are exploiting weaknesses in human psychology. Over time entire industries have learned a lot about how to improve the appeal of their offerings. What they have learned is that people are drawn to things that are outrageous, shocking and extreme. Because of negativity bias, we are attracted to conflict, hatred, and negativity. That is why algorithms are now built to show you an infinite scroll of things that make you mad, horrify you and seem impossible. Everyone is trying to make more money, and over time, that adds up to a lot of people trying to get a little bit more of your time. Most engineers, designers, writers and content creators don’t realize what they are doing. They don't see that they are participating in creating systems designed to exploit people's weaknesses. We are just as unaware, though, when we hand these highly addictive devices to our kids and hope for the best.

This note is very long, so I have broken it up. Next week in part 2, I discuss how this new digital world shapes our thinking and ultimately impacts our lives. I will also share with you how unplugging from addictive technology and content has impacted my life and why many tech leaders are doing the same. Later I will dive into why this topic matters so much in regards to transformation journeys in the 21st century.

- John Walt

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