Screen Culture, Part 3 – Addiction as a Marketing Tool

Laboratory rat, Author Janet Stephens, Source http://visualsonline.cancer.gov (PD as work product of federal govt.)

In this series, we examine the spiritual implications of today’s computer culture.

“Devices like iPhones and BlackBerries invite (demand!) constant use.  They are like packets of cigarettes that ask us never to leave them alone or bottles of pills that seek to change our minds and punish us when we try to withdraw from them.”

-Richard Watson, Future Minds:  How the Digital Age Is Changing our Minds, Why This Matters, and What We Can Do About It (2010)

Intermittent Reinforcement

Behaviorist BF Skinner discovered that we respond better to intermittent reinforcement (rewards).  Marketing which targets the individual employs such behavior modification.

Programmers use intermittent reinforcement along with confirmation bias (our tendency to feel good about information that confirms our existing beliefs) as marketing tools – some might say weapons.  We click on more of the things that make us feel good than those that do not.

Screen culture deliberately induces addictive, obsessive/compulsive behavior.  The technology, in effect, enslaves us.

Freedom in Christ

This is not what God wants for us.  “…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3: 17).  “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5: 1).

This series continues next week with Part 4 – Privacy

READERS CAN FIND MY VIEWS ON ABUSE AND ABUSE-RELATED ISSUES AT ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse https://avoicereclaimed.com