They talk about the purposeful engineering of those products and services to keep us hooked as if they were a digital form of white powder — virtual cocaine that makes us not fans of the product, but in extreme cases almost unable to go without it.

“It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back,” Aza Raskin, formerly of Mozilla and Jawbone, told the BBC. “Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.’

He should know. Back in 2006, when Raskin was working for the consultancy Humanized, he designed the infinite scroll, one of those FOMO kinds of behaviors that keep us endlessly scrolling. Gotta always see the next thing, you keep moving down the page, it never ends. Almost tricking your brain into never wanting it to end.

The BBC team also heard from Leah Pearlman, a co-inventor of Facebook’s “like” button who admitted that even she got hooked on the product. “When I need validation — I go to check Facebook.” she said, adding that the button was never meant to be a think you get addicted to for the validation it provides.- READ MORE