The Psychology Of Phone & Tech Addiction - Adam Alter - #293

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Adam Alter, and we're talking about the psychology of phone and tech addiction. Most adults report that they're within an arm's reach of their phone 24 hours a day. Our devices have slotted themselves into our lives seamlessly, but controlling our screen time is becoming increasingly difficult. So today, expect to learn the psychological tricks tech companies are using to keep you hooked, what Adam thinks the best strategies are to control screen time, what our concerns should be with VR technology, why cliffhangers are so powerful and much more. I first read Adam's book a few years ago now, and I heard him on Rogan towards the back end of last year and just had to reach out. I've loved his work for a long time. I think it's very important for all of us to understand the different cognitive biases and the weird quirks in our psychology that are being manipulated by a device that we use more than anything else. I really hope that today helps you to reframe your use of technology and your phone. And maybe you can take away some of the strategies and the techniques that me and Adam use to control our screen use so that you can liberate a little bit more time and spend it in the real world. But now it's time to learn about the psychology of phone and tech addiction with Adam Alter.
Adam Alter, welcome to the show.

**Adam Alter** (1:40)
Thanks for having me, Chris.

**Chris Williamson** (1:41)
It's a pleasure to have you here, man. Do you know anyone who doesn't wish that they spent less time on their phone?

**Adam Alter** (1:49)
Not many people. You know, it's funny, when I speak about this, and it's been a while, but when I'm in a room with people and I ask them a question, I often begin the event by saying, all right, I wanna get a sense from one to 10, from all of you, how do you feel about your phone use? Where one is, I'm completely happy, I wouldn't change a thing. It's only brought joy into my life, makes my life better, it's enriching my experiences, blah, blah, blah. To 10, it's destroying my life. So that's the spectrum. And I ask them to close their eyes, so they're all doing it individually, and they put their hands up at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 And the vast majority of people give a score between a six and a nine out of 10, which says that they feel that the phone has done a lot of harm, it's brought a lot of damage. So there are some people though, you watch them, you say one, you start at the number one, they'll be like, no, if you've got 200 people in a room, there'll be a couple of hands that go up at one. And I'll often ask them afterwards, not usually on the spot, but I'll say to them, like, tell me about your use, your phone use. And they'll say things like, I'm in tech, I know I'm unusual this way, but I've got a lot of systems in place, I'm very careful. It's never people who are like, I just happened to stumble on a perfect way of using my phone. These are people who are serious about what they're doing. So there are a few people, but not many.

**Chris Williamson** (3:01)
So you need the weaponry to be able to fight back.

**Adam Alter** (3:05)
You need the systems in place. I think the word systems is so critical with phones because they do everything they can to dismantle whatever self-control resources you have. And the only way you can fight back is by having habits and systems that mitigate, that help you overcome those many, many attempts from tech companies to circumvent those systems.

**Chris Williamson** (3:24)
What are the most common systems that you see people come up with? Is there a common thread between them?

**Adam Alter** (3:33)
Yeah, people sometimes talk about having kind of wishy-washy rules, like I will try to do this or try to do that. That never works. It's really hard to go by those rules. It's like dieting, that if you say I'm going to try to eat less chocolate, I'll only have three of these little pieces of chocolate instead of five or 10 That's really difficult. But if you say I'm not going to have chocolate, that's often doable. So I find that people who do the best are pretty firm. Like they'll say things like dinner time is completely phone-free for me. There's no way I'm going to change that rule. I'm never going to have any flexibility on that rule. I could be home alone. I could be out with friends. I could be no matter what context when I'm eating dinner, there is no phone involved, there is no TV involved, and those people seem to succeed. I know it's hard line, and some of them do have flexibility, and they'll say I'm going to make an exception. But generally speaking, I think having those really firm, hard and fast rules works well. And that's just one example, but generally having a very firm rule and establishing a habit, I think is really important in this domain.