DOPAMINE LOOP,  REWARD SYSTEMS & REINFORCED BEHAVIOR

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We don’t have to become mindless consumers forced into stimulation consumption. The millennial generation wants stimulation at every waking hour.

I of IV:  how to STEER THE THOUGHTS OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ::

A handful of people working at a handful of tech companies steer the thoughts of billions of people every day, says design thinker Tristan Harris. From Facebook notifications to Snapstreaks to YouTube autoplays, they're all competing for one thing: your attention. Harris shares how these companies prey on our psychology for their own profit and calls for a design renaissance in which our tech instead encourages us to live out the timeline we want.

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II of IV: HOW CRAVING FOR ATTENTION MAKES YOU LESS CREATIVE

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gotten more than his fair share of attention from his acting career. But as social media exploded over the past decade, he got addicted like the rest of us -- trying to gain followers and likes only to be left feeling inadequate and less creative. In a refreshingly honest talk, he explores how the attention-driven model of big tech companies impacts our creativity -- and shares a more powerful feeling than getting attention: paying attention.

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III of IV:  IT'S NOT YOU! it's your  PHONE, it is DESIGNED TO BE ADDICTING.

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IV of IV:  DOPAMINE FASTING

We live in a world that is designed to stimulate our emotions. Every ad, food product and social media post is geared to give us a short rush of pleasure which is followed by an emptiness and a craving for more. Big companies are able to leverage our cravings and make trillions of dollars off of keeping us addicted. If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you will be at the mercy of companies who will play on your impulses to control you like a puppet.  Well, feel nothing.. is dopamine fasting.

Today’s phones are hard to put down. Push notifications buzz in your pocket, red bubbles demand attention, and endless distractions sit at your fingertips. It can feel impossible to pull away from. But that’s kind of the point. When people talk about the “attention economy,” they’re referring to the fact that your time and attention are the currency on which today’s applications make money. Because apps profit off of the total time you spend on their platform, there’s a strong incentive to use psychological tricks to keep you endlessly hooked. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Tristan Harris, who runs Time Well Spent, is working to create a world where platforms can more honestly respect their users’ time.