Page 18 - CIMA SCS Workbook August 2018 - Day 2 Tasks

CIMA AUGUST 2018 – STRATEGIC CASE STUDY

Reference material – newspaper article

How the tech companies have got us all addicted

We’ve all thought it at some point… “I need to use my phone less”… “I think I could be addicted to
my phone”.

Well, the reason is because the app designers and website developers are very good at their jobs.
We think that we’re in control of our phone; we choose how we want to receive notifications, we
choose which apps we want to receive notifications from, but the reality is the people behind the
websites and apps have got so good at their job and understand neuroscience they are not just
programming apps, but also your brain.

We think that we use a website or an app for free, but someone must finance it, someone must
be making money from it. And it’s the advertisers that are paying for it - they are the customers,
so often that makes what the advertisers want more important than what the user wants from it.

Using a dating app as an example, what would you hope to get from a dating app or website? Do
you hope to spend hours swiping left or right? No? Well that’s the developers aim - the longer you
spend on their app/website swiping the greater their success. Because the longer you spend, the
more an advertiser will pay to be placed on that app or webpage and the more money the
website will then make.

Free streaming services are doing the same thing, they are trying to get you to watch for that little
bit longer now so they can put in more adverts. Auto play has been a revelation here, before you
know it you’re watching another video, then suddenly you’re watching a fourth or maybe even
more.

Journalism is going that way, with negative headlines, to get you to click on the next link. The
more time you spend on their website - clicking through to the next sensational headline - the
more money the advertisers will pay.

32 KAPLAN PUBLISHING