The Addictive Web

User Behaviour

Websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos?

Michael Schulson | November 24, 2015

When I go online, I feel like one of B F Skinner’s white Carneaux pigeons. Those pigeons spent the pivotal hours of their lives in boxes, obsessively pecking small pieces of Plexiglas. In doing so, they helped Skinner, a psychology researcher at Harvard, map certain behavioural principles that apply, with eerie precision, to the design of 21st‑century digital experiences.
Skinner trained his birds to earn food by tapping the Plexiglas. In some scenarios, the pigeons got food every time they pecked. In other arrangements, Skinner set timed intervals between each reward. After the pigeon got food, the system stopped dispensing treats for, say, 60 seconds. Once that period had elapsed, if the bird pecked, it got another payday. The pigeons never quite mastered the timing, but they got close. Skinner would randomly vary the intervals between food availability. One time there’d be food available again in 60 seconds. The next, it might be after five seconds, or 50 seconds, or 200 seconds.

B.F. Skinner experimenting with pigeons. Source: http://hackeducation.com/2014/12/25/pigeons/

<more at https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it; related links: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/exploiting-the-neuroscience-of-internet-addiction/259820/ (Exploiting the Neuroscience of Internet Addiction. July 18, 2012) and http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/confessions-of-an-internet-addict/259686/ (Confessions of an Internet Addict. July 11, 2012)>