Over the course of my short lifetime, I have always been fascinated with the concept of rewards. They are used to incentivize, entice, and persuade; however, it seems that in the 21st century, rewards have become less impactful due to a shift in the accessibility of instant gratification. To first present this point, I want to highlight the economic concept of scarce resources and unlimited wants. We as a population yearn for the unobtainable, and we want it now. In the past, it can be argued that this unlimited desire yielded a high work ethic and subsequent higher gratification received from completing accomplishments. Given that this assertion holds true, it can also be said that today we are a society of instant gratification. This can be easily demonstrated through the technology boom, which has created an easier way to do almost any task you can think of, from ordering groceries online to buying insurance directly from the supplier (Cheng, 2012). All of this can be easily seen; therefore, I am interested in looking at the more obfuscated aspects of this shift, such as how instant gratification and technology have changed our social and romantic lives. I believe that our focus on instant gratification has negative effects on our social ability and happiness, and that these negative effects can be mitigated through intentional living and decreased reliance on technology.                         

 

When examining the social effects of the changes in technology, accessibility is the first topic to examine. Not only have goods and services become more accessible, so too has information and even love due to the vast amount of new technological mediums. With this newfound accessibility comes several trade-offs, whether it is the loss of jobs or the loss of human connection. A good example of this is the economic concept of diminishing marginal utility and the hypothesis that instant access to products and services often decreases our overall utility with an experience, i.e., too many options and not enough struggle produces less gratification (Corgnet, 2015). Many argue that taking the human interaction out of purchasing goods, service, or even creating relationships is lowering our overall utility or satisfaction, as “choosing a smaller, more immediate reward over a larger, but delayed reward has been described as ‘impulsive’ and as an example of an inability to ‘delay gratification’” (Cheng). No better example of this comes to mind than Tinder, the social dating app. I plan to use this to persuade my audience through the Accessibility theory, as Tinder is an established part of the audience’s dating scene, and they know that with a swipe of the finger, you can hypothetically find love, sex, or anything in-between from the comfort of your couch. This app has been used in a plethora of social science studies and, fortunately, comedian Aziz Ansari wrote an entire book called Modern Romance on not only this app but on the entire concept of love and on how dating has changed in the age of technology. Fortunately for the sake of academic credibility, Aziz enlisted the help of many Ivy League researchers to conduct his experiments and studies. He focused mainly on focus groups and comparing the findings between younger millennials and older baby boomers. One argument that stuck out to me is made by MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle:

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Turkle convincingly makes the case that younger people are so used to text-based communications, where they have time to gather their thoughts and precisely plan what they are going to say, that they are losing their ability to have spontaneous conversation. She argues that the muscles in our brain that help us with spontaneous conversation are getting less exercise in the text-filled world, so our skills are declining (Ansari, 2015).

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Bringing it back to the Tinder example, we have time on the app to think out every message we send and also to formulate our own perception of who the person is based on their most attractive pictures and best traits. This usually leads to either too high of expectations or too low and a potential lost connection. Ultimately, Turkle’s point really resonated with me and hopefully with everyone else as well if you think about what we all do in an awkward situation, such as an elevator ride or even at the bar. That’s right, we pull out our phone until something changes to relieve the awkwardness. This common occurrence illustrates our border-line addiction to this relief granted through the dopamine rush associated with checking our phone for a notification (Duhigg, 2012). This is where I want to utilize Social Judgement Theory because if the audience accepts their dependency, then they will be able to accept that something needs to be done about it. Hopefully this explanation of why we rely on notifications and technology is placed relatively close to their latitude of acceptance, as they can relate to feeling the need to check one’s phone in these situations. I hope to further piggyback off of this acceptance to better persuade the audience that small changes will ultimately increase their happiness. If we further examine this elevator situation, even if your phone does not beep, you will usually think it did, which is the cue in the habit loop described by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit. The subsequent routine is to check one’s phone and the reward is a brief but powerful dose of dopamine. This little habit loop occurs nearly constantly throughout the day, and is indicative of our current relationship with gratification. I hope to use the peripheral route of the Elaboration Likelihood Model by playing a text tone and having a picture of a notification pop up to illustrate this point. I plan to use this to support my call to action, incorporating the audience’s self-efficacy here, challenging them to notice how strong the impulse is when their phone lights up, and how it can diminish with less frequent use overtime.                                                                                          

 

This innately addictive nature of notifications has been capitalized on by the technology companies, who have spent millions studying the effects which notifications have on us. That is why almost every app offers to send you notifications now, to associate the almost unperceivable dopamine rush with their app to increase use. The fact that many of us are aware of this and still fall into the trap of constantly checking our phone for these ghost notifications creates some cognitive dissonance, as our behavior does not align with our thought process. In this class 78% of survey respondents said it is difficult to not check their phone when they see their phone light up. This is partly “because of the capacity of our basal ganglia [which] takes a behavior and turns it into an automatic routine” (Duhigg, 2012), which I hope to convey using the central route of the ELM model now that everyone is paying more attention with a higher ego involvement after sharing the survey results.   

 

Ultimately, I hope to convince people to live more intentionally and rely less on technology to create our gratification. Acknowledging that most will not change their phone habits will increase the class’s self-efficacy, because I only want each one of them to be more cognizant of these problems, and take baby steps to be more present in their lives. By getting them to focus on delaying checking their phones when they are bored or in an awkward situation, I hope that it will spill over into other areas. I will feel satisfied if people at least become more conscious of how they are affected by these technologies. In regards to their response efficacy, I want everyone to know that buying into what you do, from purchasing a good to working at a company, can create more naturally occurring gratification, “as people strengthen their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spills over into what they eat or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touches everything” (Duhigg, 2012), improving our quality of relationships and ultimately, our quality of life.