I'll start this article by quoting
"Your Subconscious mind works continuously, while you are awake, and while you sleep." - Napoleon Hill
Let us understand habit forming technologies by understanding what is a trigger, internal trigger and external trigger then come back to Instagram and how does it affects us.
Trigger - Its a reminder to the activities that one perform. The activities maybe using a substance or thing, urge or anything we do in our life for that matter. The triggers can be classified into two different categories.
External Triggers - They are people, places, things and situations that remind us to take a particular course of action or make any decisions. Ex phone ringing, notification etc
Internal Triggers - These are thoughts, emotions, physical sensations that influence our course of action and decision making.
Below is a short video explaining the working of "Reward Centers" in the brain
Internal Triggers, External Trigger and Reward centers determine what action we take or what decision we make and how we seize the opportunity when presented with a particular situation in life. An example of which can be understood by the story below.
Story - I capture whatever cool stuff i see, i feel i need to grab that shot before its gone and share it on Instagram, the app lets me share whatever pictures i want to share with my friends as well as edit them. Sometimes i get lots of hearts and sometimes i don't, and i also enjoy browsing content on Instagram. Its a cool way to kill the time.
Moral of the story - Urge = " Need to grab the moment before its gone" - Internal Trigger, Before this app there was any such need, to capture the moment - Maybe no, Sharing associated with reward in terms of likes or hearts another driving force to generate the urge in short Instagram is using psychological tricks to play with our mind.
Cycle of predictable response = Reinforcement loop -> Repeated conditioning -> Resultant Behavior {created a relationship between things i see and the app in my pocket. }
"A product intertwined with emotions and thought creates internal triggers which in turn creates habit forming technologies."
Analyzing the pattern
- Create Awareness using External Triggers Ex - Using filtered images on social platforms with link embedded in them. "Fast Beautiful Photo sharing" conveying purpose of the service.
- Simplistic Interface - No need to think, A picture taken and edited creates a sensation of sharing by associating itself with rewards.
- Strengthening Internal Triggers - External sensations linked with an app in pocket.