How to Break Free of Your Phone's 'Persuasive Design'

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There is a price for time spent on our phones and computers even when something appears free because the online world trades in our data and our attention.

Our devices’ software is engineered around a concept called persuasive design. Companies channel countless research dollars into maximizing profit gained by influencing where we spend our time online. Tech companies foundationally, intentionally, and continually collect our information while honing methods that can hold and disrupt our attention.

How does persuasive design work? Intricate details of how we use our phones are cataloged constantly. Links and notifications we click on are analyzed and affect the next round we see. Topics of interest, purchases, games, apps, and news headlines we view are compiled, details get analyzed right down to colors of icons most likely to catch a phone user’s gaze, and from that information what we see gets curated. Then that data is resold to other companies to use the same way. In a world in which our attention and data are currency, everything collected is refined and indefinitely readjusted until our devices become a sinkhole for our attention.

Is Big Business Hijacking Your Free Will?

Even when we believe we’re acting independently, persuasive design affects our mental health and influences our beliefs. Exciting content releases dopamine in our brains, leaving us craving the next hit. Posted pictures of perfection draw our eye and lead to an increased sense of comparison and jealousy, influencing experiences like poor body image and low self-esteem.

Our attention gets drawn to things that startle or disturb us, but doomscrolling ramps up our anxiety and dampens our mood. And as a bottom line, screen time replaces activities that keep us mentally and physically healthy like reading, sleep, and exercise.

Persuasive design also polarizes our thinking. The curated information presented to us online is far from neutral. An algorithm determines what we’re most likely to click on, and unconsciously we tend to seek whatever reassures us our beliefs are true. Whatever the algorithm hands us is where we click. We think we’re neutrally exploring, but that click further solidifies our beliefs. More intense, scary headlines draw even more attention. Our ideas trend extreme by someone else’s design.

Any new way forward starts with intention: Awareness of the situation allows for choice. If we want to raise children in a more reasonable and balanced world, we can each decide to push back on this inherently distorted system. Someone wants us to mindlessly scroll, to give away our information, to buy or vote a certain way. We can instead recognize the impact of persuasive design, do our best to manage it, and educate our families. And then from that place of awareness, we can aim to live in our tech-centered world far more in touch with our best intentions.

Act Now

Our devices are only tools, not inherently good or bad. Right now, some companies and individuals take advantage of the intricacies of persuasive design by thriving off its ability to keep us agitated. For example, it’s factual, not corny, to say that hatred and anger never end when met with more hatred and anger. It leads to a twisted sustained engagement, without much benefit except to those people who successfully manipulate this predictable behavioral pattern.

The unproductive cycle of confrontation only ends when someone like you chooses another way forward. Consider for a moment: When’s the last time someone who was attacked online suddenly changed their mind? They usually double down and get louder.

Status quo, our use of technology largely promotes this kind of reactivity. And yet since attention is online currency, intentionally making wise and proactive choices about how we give ours—breaking the cycle by choice—has the power to lead to widespread change.

It may feel like by disengaging with anger online, we let angry people win. However, we can still support the causes and ideas we feel strongly about We can vote for whichever party we believe will benefit society. Even if one day it’s necessary to fight to protect ourselves or someone else in actual danger, we can still try to de-escalate the rhetoric. When we engage with anger or hatred in the same manner, they’ve already won.

For the sake of our children, when you come across reactivity and hate online, don’t click. Don’t promote that message by engaging with it and don’t argue unless you feel someone is listening and willing to have a discussion. Take a stand by supporting powerful voices that model compassion and respect.

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Persuasive design relies on us acting without awareness and intention. Naïve as it may sound, it is literally true that if enough people step back and pay attention to healthier, reasonable voices, that’s where the money will go. In the meantime, it can improve your mental health. Try it: Intentionally use your power and attend to whatever you feel supports your own well-being—and the world’s.

5 Proven Ways to Live Better

Here’s a resolution then for 2024: In an attention-driven online economy, elect not to give manipulative angry voices any of your currency at all.

This low-key message of reason is unlikely to go viral—because of persuasive design. It’s not the sort of message that grabs clicks. Help spread the word and make a difference.

• Seek podcasts and shows that promote open-mindedness and reason, even when the ideas differ from your own, while avoiding hateful and inflammatory sources.
• Pause before clicking any link and reflect: Is this likely to be beneficial and truthful?
• Manage your time online and your news intake while cutting down on doomscrolling.
• Seek political candidates who act reasonably; avoid voting for hate in the upcoming elections.
• Support the causes you believe in by giving your attention to reason, compassion, and care.

Whatever you aim for in 2024, for your own sake and for your family, friends, and future: Do not wait any longer. Hang up on hate.