Damian Thompson - The Fix

‘I’ve seen people burst into tears because a credit check wouldn’t allow them to stretch to the latest upgrade. That’s when I started thinking: I need to get the hell out of here.’

Admittedly, many psychiatrists don’t believe in ‘internet addiction’ as a medical condition, let alone addiction to a specific model of smartphone. They argue that obsessive users aren’t addicted to the internet so much as to the experiences it provides, such as digital porn and computer games. But few experts would deny that gadgets such as iPhones can produce behaviour that bears the hallmarks of addiction. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that the ability of manufacturers to stimulate this behaviour is racing far ahead of our ability to cope with the psychological and social problems that are created as a result.

The science of pleasure is playing a greater role in the marketing strategies of all sorts of companies: the people who waft the smell of freshly baked doughnuts at you in the shopping mall have fine-tuned their recipes in the laboratory, not the kitchen. But Apple is in a class of its own. No other company has managed to mix such a finely balanced cocktail of desire, in which the crude flavour of compulsion is disguised by a deliciously minimalist aesthetic.

‘More than any other product, the iPhone has encouraged the tech industry to concentrate on getting people hooked on things,’ says Yiannopoulos. ‘Apple’s marketing genius, and the incredible attention to detail paid to the design of their devices, filters down into the iPhone developer ecosystem.’

He cites the example of Angry Birds, a simple computer game app that, by May 2011, had been downloaded 200 million times. 13 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. The premise of Angry Birds is simple: players launch birds across the screen with a slingshot, judging the trajectory of flight and altering the force and initial direction accordingly. It sounds harmless enough. But type ‘Angry Birds addiction’ into Google and you’re presented with 3.24 million results. So many people complain about being addicted to the game that it has spawned self-help pages all over the internet. Some of these pages ask whether Angry Birds addictions are changing people’s brains. Self-described addicts say they don’t know why they can’t put the game down, and talk about compulsively tracing their fingers on tables as they subconsciously recall the catapult action of the game. These sound suspiciously like the little rituals associated with alcoholism and drug abuse.

Again, perhaps a degree of scepticism is called for: it can only be a matter of time before some opportunistic researcher diagnoses ABAD – Angry Birds Addiction Disorder (which would presumably be a particular strain of IAD, since the game is played mostly on iPhones). No doubt the Angry Birds craze will fade, as these crazes always do. But it may well leave behind a residue, in the form of the compulsive instinct to perform repetitive actions.

It’s not a conspiracy theory to suggest that the primary task of iPhone game developers is learning how to manipulate our brains’ reward circuits. They cheerfully admit as much. At the 2010 Virtual Goods Summit in London, Peter Vesterbacka, lead developer for Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, described how they make the game so addictive. ‘We use simple A/B testing to work out what keeps people coming back,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to guess any more. With so many users, we can just run the numbers.’ 14 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

We can just run the numbers. Remember those words. Where previously advertising and marketing were more creative disciplines that involved a huge element of risk, a new generation of manufacturers doesn’t need to guess what will keep us coming back for our fix: they already know.

Viewers of House, America’s most popular medical drama – and at one time the most watched television programme in the world – are familiar with the sight of Dr Gregory House, the snide, sexy, crippled antihero, tipping back his head and tossing a couple of Vicodin into his mouth. He’s even been known to throw a pill into the air and catch it like a performing seal. The screenplays go out of their way to portray House as an addict: several times we’re shown him shivering and sweating his way through opiate withdrawal. But, in the end, the Vicodin is as integral to his charm as his twisted humour. The one fuels the other.

Although Dr House, played brilliantly by Hugh Laurie, is prescribed the drug to dull the pain of a leg injury, he also uses it to stave off boredom and stimulate his work as a diagnostic detective. Any similarity to the cocaine-injecting Sherlock Holmes is surely intentional. But only the very earliest Holmes stories actually depict drug abuse: Arthur Conan Doyle, worried that he might encourage addiction, quickly made his hero abandon the vice. Not so the makers of House, who have sustained the central character’s dependence on Vicodin despite criticism from some medical professionals (and, reportedly, the Drug Enforcement Agency).

‘Since the first episode I have been concerned with the show’s message and have attempted several times to educate the writers and producers regarding the danger of Vicodin abuse,’ wrote one physician, coincidentally named Dr John House, who specialises in hearing loss, a devastating side effect of Vicodin. 15 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. He lobbied long and hard for this symptom to be recognised in House and eventually it was, albeit in a throwaway line. (As I write, the series is coming to an end, and so far one symptom that hasn’t been mentioned, so far as I can tell, is the awful constipation it causes: a truly realistic scenario would force the good doctor to spend most of the season straining on the lavatory.) The fictional House does succeed in giving up Vicodin after suffering rather implausible hallucinations caused by the drug and completing a period of rehab, but after a couple of seasons he is shown relapsing.