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PMPU (problematic mobile phone use); is a condition identified by the Australian Psychological Society as one of the biggest behavioural addiction challenges of the twenty-first century.
I spoke on Sunrise about what makes phone use such an addictive aspect of our life.
Part of the reason is its compact size and portability, we never talk about an addiction to our laptop.
Another reason is the design of apps. We have around 40 apps on our phone. Each app is like a business, that sits on our phone; like any business its whole aim is to keep us using their business.
Apps use dark patterns (sneaky hidden strategies) that tap into who we are as humans to keep us wanting to use it. For example as humans we crave social connection and apps use a trigger to show us that someone is connecting with us socially- and we get a buzz from that. Eg. Instagram and Linkedin use a little red dot on the app icon. It’s just a dot but we have learnt that this dot means someone has liked our posts or someone has acknowledged us. We love this as humans and it keeps us coming back to the app (the business)!
I also spoke about children and phone addiction. View the video for more.
