A Breakdown of "The Binge Breaker" by Bianca Bosker

Addiction, or connection? A Breakdown 

Map of Silicon Valley and its existing companies

            Silicon Valley forever remains the center of technology across the United States. Located in California, Silicon Valley is home to several competing technological companies, including Google and Apple, Inc., as well as many innovators such as Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Time Well Spent founder Tristan Harris. In “The Binge Breaker,” an article dealing with the prone addictions of technology, Bianca Bosker shadows Tristan Harris as he continues to find a way to lower the addiction that has been brought on by gadgets. In a world that is surrounded by tablets, iPhones, and other devices that offer social media applications, how is it possible to reinforce an improved utilization of this technology? Generally, technology has been known as the shortcut to solutions, such as communicating with a colleague. In a place like Silicon Valley, technology is made and used for further innovation, but there comes a point of no return.

            Alumni of Stanford University and former employee of Google, Harris compares the cell phone to a “slot machine in [his] pocket” simply due to its addictive qualities. With new advancements in technology in the Silicon Valley that soon spreads across the world, the people at most risk are considered to be part of the younger generation. For example, as Bianca Bosker mentions, kids are melting their own brains by continuously using tablets or new forms of technology. This is an interesting concept to bring up because she claims that the older generations have learned to adapt to the addictiveness that technology may feature. However, what exactly is the older generation? What is the age group of this “older generation” that Bosker mentions within her article? From the beginning of the article, Harris even particularly references that at age thirty-two, he has still found ways to be negatively affected by the onsets of technology. In this situation, Harris has found the basis of software to be the ill foundation of addiction to technology. How could this be so?

iPhone (1st Generation -
"This is only the beginning.")
Released in 2007

            While currently working for his new technological company Time Well Spent, Tristan Harris focuses on the possibility of creating software that doesn’t result in addictive activities by people of all age. For example, within Google, he has generated a setting that delays the incoming of new mail while someone is still completing a task. An interesting component, this allows the user to focus on a task without being distracted. But the problem that still comes across innovators within the Silicon Valley is that technology produces more maximizing experiences for users. A Facebook executive, for example, focuses of this type of maximizing because their main goal is to hook users by tapping into “deep seated human needs.” In addition, this type of strategy is what makes the most popular sites and applications, like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and others, successful. As critics continue to view the negative onsets of technology to be caused by weak will power, it is in fact due to the type of software that companies come up with.

            Although the majority of the thoughts written in “The Binge Breaker” are ideas brought upon by Harris himself, Brosker is still capable of giving this topic surrounding technology a credible outlook. While she reflects the strategies and opinions of Harris, the reader, including myself, can understand that technology is causing us to act in certain ways. The rise of technology, I think, started as a phenomenon that was new to the world, simply due to new advances in the global and interconnected world. Since people started to communicate more by the century, by the decade, by the year, by the month, by the week, and by the day, there have existed these mysterious “variable rewards.” As Harris describes to Bosker, this is a term used by psychologists as they attempt to explain the compulsiveness caused by the advanced technological devices, but more particularly the smart phone. An example, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter hook us all by delivering messages, photos, and “likes,” but they all come at an uncertain schedule. For example, Dr. B.J. Fogg at Persuasive Technology Lab explains that a like, which is then considered a “variable reward,” encourages the user of a social media application to shift from occasional to daily activity of the app.

Social Media Brand Usage 2016, Edison Research

            Although there have been numerous claims that users of a younger generation are most negatively influenced by the onset of technology, Harris and Bosker together explain that the addiction can melt a brain of any age. Technology, as Harris explains, should be the doorway for meeting our goals as well as giving us control over relationships and setting boundaries. With the experimentation of software he has created, he is capable of counting the amount of hours someone devotes his or her time to each app per week. But within one day, he was able to count that the average person looked at his or her phone approximately 150 times, which is an astonishing statistic because it really shows about how much technology has influence our activities. After interrupted by an application, such as Snapchat or Instagram, Bosker implies that it takes about twenty-five more minutes for that user to return to his or her original task. With software that is brought upon by these competing companies in the Silicon Valley, it’s difficult to see whether technology will ever return to its original role rather than addiction in one’s life.

            The next question is: Now what? What do we as a society need to accomplish in order to prevent this point of no return in the field of technology? Perhaps, it may be due to the flexibility of software that companies like Google and Apple, Inc. uses. Although these companies produce such advanced software that enables us to communicate whenever we want to in various ways, there still remains a gap in how to fix the addiction. According to Harris, we have lost control of our relationships with technology because technology has become much better at controlling everyone. In a situation where it’s addictive to look at his phone, Harris tapes a post-it note to the inside of his computer saying: “Do not open without intention.” Is this something that everyone should follow? If snapstreaks on Snapchat or likes on Instagram is really giving people of all ages that much anxiety, there is room for a new type of software: an alternative that will help us spend our time well, surrounded by core values.