[000:00:00;00] ah, ever wake up at 3 a. m and the 1st thing you do is reach for your phone. a quick scroll through your latest messages, and then you check snapshot, your instagram fade take talk. i used to be addicted to instagram so much though, that i actually had to delete the app altogether. these apps a meant to be addictive, the tricks develop is used and how you can avoid getting hooked. that's our topic today on shift. ah. so how do develop is gauge the success of the apps? well, it's all about the retention rate. the percentage of uses who continue using the app within a given time. in other words, the amount of users staying glued to those screens. the goal of these developers,

they want us to spend as much time as possible on their app. the biggest, the engine for engagement and habit forming products is always a variable reward. so variable role was studied by be a skinner, the thought of operant conditioning. and he found that when a reward is given on, on a variable schedule of reinforcement, this increases the action the desired behavior. so in all sorts of things that we find engaging, you will find a variable ward at developers want to know as much about us as possible. many apps collect our data and create incredibly accurate user profiles. these are then turned into profit through targeted advertising. getting uses hooked is not only a strategy used by social media apps like instagram and take talk. it's also used by shopping apps like the chinese clothing retailer sheehan. earlier in 2022, sheehan was estimated to be worth about $100000000000.00 us dollars. more than the valuation of zora and haitian m combined company secret to success. using our data

for ever marketing. they have a blended business model which is only e commerce, but also social network. honestly, they also have a pretty robust operations, physical operations to list pre fillers, social media data, data corporations, data if it's orchestrated and combined is gives them the clothing retailer sheehan harnesses user data to tailor the perfect marketing strategy. it has created an entire ecosystem around its products. the app is a hybrid platform of sales and social media. in one tab, you can browse through items and in another, you can watch influencers, modeling the look. you can of course comment or like, or simply buy the product with a tab of a button. they're getting more information about your preferences as opposed to just saying, hey, do you like this? sure, if you like that, sure you're commenting or liking or watching a video where somebody is using one of their items and that makes the product

better with use. so called key opinion leaders, booster brands value, katie perry, little nasa x and rita, or just a few of the celebrities who have collaborated with she in the perhaps even more important is the army of micro influencer. she works with some are awarded for their tick tock, post with free clothing. others are in commission for the clicks on their post that turn into sales on she and website. 2 it's easy to get drawn in by these celebrities and influences and as uses we reveal exactly what we like. with the help of smart data analysis. sheehan can identify trends at lightning speed and produce clothing quickly and cheaply. if any given item goes viral, it can then be reproduced and our daughter helps feed this cycle. she and uses a variety of tools to find online fashion tracks. the aims to identify our desires and capitalize on them, compelling us to spend more time on the app. sheehan isn't only collecting our data,

it's cross linking it to they are pretty efficient in data triangulation, which is combining data from different sources. they have basically more relevant data than our, our, any other that's a normal fast fashion brand. by running such data through smart algorithms, she and tries to predict what items might interest customers in the future. precisely how such analysis works, remains she ins, well guarded secret, tick, tock, instagram, and youtube also use algorithms to show users. videos they made like tick tock, especially excels. at this, the app uses a i to scan and identify certain elements and videos and play them for users with similar viewing habits. on tick tock, it's possible for anyone to get their 15 minutes of fame with a popular video on instagram going viral depends more on a craters,

reach and how their content has performed in the past with a steady stream of new and attention grabbing content. it's so easy to just get caught up in an endless, scroll through tick tock, and also develop his art total experts at playing without sense of foam up. all fear of missing out. they just use pretty standard, so called behavioral design methods. it's over use may cause people being cooked into so called infinite loops. so pretty clever notifications which if you dont open it may cause the syndrome also here missing out there is this limits this behavioral design when it starts to be harmful and i guess she is an extreme here. ups lexianne turn your visit into a kind of game and one which you don't always win from a psychology standpoint. the she and app really leverage is what's called variable rewards or intermittent reinforcement. and this is the center of what i call the hooked model. much like you go to casino and there's this,

the excitement of gambling because there's uncertainty around what you might when fun of watching a sports match, right? you don't know where the balls going to go next. what team is going to score. there's a very similar mechanic in an app like she in or social media for that example that scrolling of searching and searching and scrolling, ah, is exemplified in sheehan and al prime totally false for it. there are various situations to which dopamine is released in our brain. for instance, when we eat exercise or receive a present, this neurotransmitter activates feelings of happiness and the rewards center of our brain. motivating us to repeat the same behaviors. there's kind of as popular perception in the media that doesn't mean as like cocaine, that it gets you ah, to, to do things against your will. and that's totally inaccurate. that domain reinforces learning. it reinforce, please mylan sheath between the neurons in your brain to make those connections stronger, that neurons that fire together wire together and so dope. amine is like the

sealant for the glue around these connections. ab developers take advantage of the motivating effect of dopamine. they keep us coming back with virtual trophies, bonus points, and progress notifications. the audio book service audible, for instance, rewards members with badges and vouchers for extended listening. our brain learns that listening for longer is good. the strategy here is gamification. gamification means to use game like mechanics and non gaming environments, points, badges, leader boards typically, ah, language learning apps like this to and do only go also use such mechanisms. progress bars show how far we're advancing in our lessons. this motivates us and even partial successes, release dopamine in our brain, a hearty congratulations from the app makes us even happier, as does moving up in the ranking. is it a bit manipulative? yes. but is it bad per say? well,

that depends. of course products are designed to be engaging. that is their very purpose of an app. can't get you to go exercise. if it can't get you to learn a language. if it can't make you more productive at work, that company is going to go out of business that the whole point of these type of products. so gamification elements help motivate us, for instance, to learn that this can become problematic when money enters the picture. the practice of using gamification to get users hooked on an app and then start charging the money is fairly common. in the free version of dual lingo, only a limited number of mistakes are allowed before you have to restart the lesson. extra attempts can be made in exchange for payment in the paid version, there's no limit to how many mistakes you can make. many fitness apps like strosver or adi, das running only on mark root challenges and trophies in the full versions she and also uses game elements to keep us on the platform for longer users get points for

logging in daily and reviewing products and points can be exchanged for discounts. now, when there are products and services that might take more, something more valuable, so it's not just your time and attention, but your money. then we have special conditions, right? then we need special restraints to make sure that people are making decisions that they know don't low regret later on, on average, people spend about 3 hours a day on their phones. of course, that number varies greatly depending on how old you are and where you're from. and we check our phones $58.00 times a day, and that's just an average. the problem isn't solely how much time we're spending on apps. it's also how frequently we're using them. study showed that every single interruption hampers our productivity. so reaching out for potential means we'll likely have to put down our phones to prevent apps from taking over our lives. it's

crucial to set boundaries to save us from ourselves, to prevent distraction with pats, a patch. when you make a pre commitment to do what you're say, you're going to do. so if you say ok, i'm going to use a twitter for 30 minutes and i have alarm clock that goes off. and if it go, if i'm still using after x, y, z, i have to pay a penalty, or i'm going to have a friend and force it, or whatever the case might be. so all kinds of ways that you can use these packs to make sure you do what it is you say you're going to do with your time. you can start out by analyzing your own behavior functions such as screen time on i phones and digital. well being on android reveal how much of your time each app consumes. that will help you determine which apps you should take. a break from. instagram had the feature reminding users to take breaks to get them fresh air or to tackle a to do. there are also apps designed to boost productivity by game a fine your daily life. with super better you team up with others to take on

tidying up challenges, for instance. with apps like epic when are have been occur, you can watch your avatar ascend through gaming levels that you take off to do in your real life. you can exchange gold coin for better equipment for your avatar, but beware, even these apps can't guarantee motivation in the long run. many times gamification doesn't work very well, because it's doing what we call selling chocolate covered broccoli. i'm going to take something, people say they want, they say they want to eat healthy broccoli, but they don't really want to. so i'm going to take chocolate and i'm going to put on top of the broccoli, and now i'm going to serve it to you. now, will you eat? it? will know nobody wants to cover broccoli. it's gross. no. it's important to decide what you want out of life and set intentions. because with an inner sense of purpose, even the most addictive apps will be powerless against you. one more

tip to help save you addictive apps at least at nighttime, instead of your phone, try using a classic alarm clock that way you can banish your phone from your bedroom, resulting hopefully in bed a sleep better concentration and more productivity. what tips do you have against addictive apps right in and let us know that's all for today. the next on. ah, ah ah, are you ready to get a little more extreme? these places in europe are smashing all the records. stepped into

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