Human behavior is a very fickle thing; it morphs in so many ways, and due to so many things, it’s a wonder we even have a name for it. Scientists and researchers throughout the decades have tried in so many ways to understand, predict, and even control this, but there has never been as much success as in the last decade. Human behavior is a reaction to something; we see something and react. This is the external effect. There is also the its opposite, when we want something and we act. In the past decade, the latter has been leveraged and capitalized upon.
There’s a lab called the Behavioral Design Lab at Stanford university, run by researcher B.J. Foggs. This lab is supposed to be the birth and growing place of a field called ‘Behavioural design’; it studies how human behavior can be changed. Foggs might have started with the honest goal of understanding human behavior to change it for good, but as it has happened throughout history, the insights from this lab and many others were utilized for other purposes that were not entirely good. Insights from fields like cognitive science, behavioral design, gamification, motivational studies, decision-making, and behavioral economics have been used to create and power what we now call the digital world.
The digital world has so many facets, dimensions, and venues that people can get lost in, and most of these are purposed this way. Recommendation systems, personalized suggestions, training based on past data, and many more technological innovations combined with the magic of psychological scientific research have led to the day digital devices have become mandatory. Studies conducted on teens in Japan reveal that more than half the kids believe that there is no life without phones, internet dependency has grown tremendously in the past years, internet connections and mobile phone subscriptions have grown manyfold, and they are only projected to rise. This is not all bad; there is good in this progress, but it is unchecked and uncontrolled. Most of us are just reacting to what’s happening without trying to take a break and understand it. We don’t have the time to take a break, and the terrible thing is we don’t exactly know what is happening.
Going back to behavior, another essential thing about behavior is that it can be influenced, and we never know if the behavior we are displaying is addressing our wants and need or is responding to some external influence. This is exactly what’s happening to the majority of the population today. Humans undeniably have psychological issues; these range from anxiety and trauma to approval, acceptance, social fear, or bad parental influences. Everything that happens around us has an impact on us, we might just not be aware of it. So many experiments have proven that you only consciously process about 20% of what you see or hear; the rest is processed and stored. You just don’t know it. All of this has an effect on how we behave. Our mind divides experiences into repeatable and non-repeatable; it will do anything to do the repeatable ones and prevent the non-repeatable ones, even without conscious effort. Think of the things that scare you and try to find reasons for them, I can’t find reasons for more than half of my fears. They are not unrooted, I just don’t know them. And now science has caught up to this fact. The fields mentioned above have uncovered tons of insights about influencing human behavior without us ever recognizing it. Think about why you can’t stop to binge watch shit or why the first thing you do when you get on public transport is open your phone and look at it; when you take your phone out, you don’t even know why you’re doing it, you just do it.
Our mind protects us from repeating behavior that makes us feel uncomfortable. Research has shown that most addictions are just symptoms of more significant underlying psychological problems/phenomena. Me, I take out my phone because I get self-conscious on public transport; this behavior is a way for me to cope with my problem. This is what the digital world helps you do; you can just cope with stuff without ever having to deal with it. On top of it, you’re also showered with digital rewards like dopamine to reinforce this behavior. You’re encouraged to keep relying on these coping mechanisms, whatever they are ( social media, porn, youtube, news, games, and more). Your behavior is being controlled, directed, influenced , reinforced, and rewarded.
The digital world has also removed the friction for influence; now, there are not only companies influencing your behavior but people. It has become supremely easy to make you do things or not do things. Individual identity is becoming scarcer and scarcer, and collective stereotypes are replacing it. Do you use the latest finance tracking app? Do you use this cool new water bottle? Do you also follow this productivity blogger? If yes, you’re a part of them, part of this large collective identity that is bubbled and fuelled by your need to be socially accepted. It doesn’t give you any capital or benefits; it alleviates your fears and takes one more step in crushing your individuality. The digital world that has seeped into every aspect of your world and being is making you a part of something and removing yourself from you. It enforces that being part of something is more important than looking into yourself. What do you do now? Now that you recognize that you live amidst imposters, you’re reflecting behavior instead of acting by yourself. Now that you know that you live in a world of distractions and rewards that make it hard to think independently, what do you do? Where do you look to find a solution to protect your identity and individuality?
You look inside yourself, and you look towards intentionality.