Smartphones change the way we give attention to the world. Cognitive resources are involved in the perpetual monitoring of potential relevant notifications. Our brain gets addicted to this kind of variable rewards.

1. Attention and smartphones
How our brain changes priorities and way of thinking with the smartphone

2. About me
● Software engineer
● I worked in web companies
● Big Data, Social Media, Influence Marketing

3. Context
● Lesson given at high school
● Digital Citizenship (optional alternative class to Catholic Religion)
● 14 to 18 years old students
● Academic year 2017/2018

4. The iGen generation with internet on hand
● Never alone with myself
○ At a party, on a trip, on a bench during a game, at practice.. I check my phone.
○ My friends are always with me through chats, comments, posts.
● Never focussed on just one thing, on what’s happening around me
○ There’s always my usual comforting world every time I go online (every 5 minutes?)
● Never bored, but without any boost to go deeper in a single thing
● Flooded with data, every answer is accessible

5. Race for attention
● Our minds can be hijacked
● Tristan Harris TED talk
● Center for Human Technology organization
● Interview with ex Facebook president and technical leader

6. The hook model
● Trigger
● Action
● Variable reward
● Investment
● Nir Eyal presentation

7. Attention economy
● Basic commodity scarcity: our attention
● Race for attention grows more and more: more entities want some (apps,
sites, games, ..)
● We as human beings can afford a maximum quantity of attention per day
We reach our physical boundaries (and beyond)

8. Perpetual partial attention
● Limited ability to focus and often lower IQs
● Consuming instant content
● How many times I touch my phone
● The only presence of our phone drain some cognitive resources

9. The mere presence of our smartphone
reduces available cognitive capacity
● While we are performing a certain task, we prevent our mind not to monitor
potential stimuli coming from our phone
● They are relevant, important for our goals in life (before checking, we don’t
know what each notification will bring)
● It’s an active work, it requires cognitive resources
● Our available resources for the current task drop
The mere smartphone presence, even if not in our visual
field, lowers the cognitive resources we can use for the task
we are currently working on.

10. Who built it doesn’t let their children use it
● A lot of young software engineers and designers are getting away from the
products they contributed to create
● They send their children to elite schools in the Silicon Valley where
smartphones, tablets and even laptops are banned.
● At Steve Jobs' house

11. Addiction and compulsive behaviours
● Technology is turning out to compulsive habits, if not addiction like it
happens with drugs
○ Impulse to check a notification, to go on youtube, facebook, twitter just for a few minutes
○ Finding yourself clicking and scrolling one hour later
○ Nothing of this is accidental, all goes as designers want
● Some anti-distraction tools: DF youtube (distraction free), HabitLab, Forest
app
● Handle and organize your iPhone