Brain Hack Documentary Reflection

Brain Hack

This video is talking about how is technology basically programing our brains, and mobile apps main goal now is to keep us on our phones for longer. The video also interviews some computer engineers, and they confirm and explain how this is happening, and how most mobile phone applications are just trying to make you more addicted to your phone so they can make more money off you.

I found it very surprising that the goal of the mobile phone applications developers is not to make the application better or make it more useful, or even to appeal to the user’s wants and needs, but instead they are just trying to make it more addictive and make people spend more and more time on it. As the video calls it they’re programing our brain, they’re hacking our brain to keep looking at that screen for the longest amount of time possible, as mentioned in class the average person looks at their phone every 6 minutes, which tells you a lot about the level of addictiveness that our society is in right now, and I didn’t really realize that until I saw the video, the applications are trying to get the applications to do more things than the usual so that way you’ll spend more time on the applications, like Snapchat isn’t just pictures anymore, you can text, send voice notes, video call or even do a regular video call, same thing with Facebook as well, the things that the app can do is growing by the minute.

The most shocking element to was the fact that they’re actually trying to keep our eyes glued to the screens and that apple store rejected an app that tries to do the opposite and helps people get away from their phones. Apple and the app store are also encouraging this way of developing new applications, not just that but they’re also stopping any application that tries and counter that or just tries to pull the users away from their phone for a few minutes. I always saw apple as the company that really cares about its consumers and it always buts them first, but in this situation, I guess they care about the application, the ads and the money more than anything else.

What I found confirming is that some engineers are actually against this and they see what is wrong with this happening, and why it should stop happening, also that they are trying to develop some applications to help the people use their phones less frequently. Finding some people that actually care about other stuff than the ads and the money they’re going to make off the application, but instead they’re thinking about how will this help the people and maybe make the world a better place than everyone. Maybe they’re a few group of people but maybe their application will get approved. Maybe the apple and the other developers will see what they’re doing might be hurting the society and they stop it and try to fix the damage they have done.