full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Tristan Harris: How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Let me give you an example of Snapchat. If you didn't know, Snapchat is the nmbeur one way that teenagers in the uneitd States communicate. So if you're like me, and you use text messages to communicate, Snapchat is that for teenagers, and there's, like, a hundred million of them that use it. And they invented a feature cllaed sapastrknes, which shows the number of days in a row that two people have communicated with each other. In other words, what they just did is they gave two people something they don't want to lose. Because if you're a teagener, and you have 150 days in a row, you don't want that to go away. And so think of the little blocks of time that that schedules in kids' minds. This isn't theoretical: when kids go on vacation, it's been shown they give their passwords to up to five other friends to keep their Snapstreaks going, even when they can't do it. And they have, like, 30 of these things, and so they have to get through taking photos of just pictures or walls or ceilings just to get through their day. So it's not even like they're having real ctoaienorsvns. We have a tmeitpaton to think about this as, oh, they're just using Snapchat the way we used to gossip on the telephone. It's probably OK. Well, what this msseis is that in the 1970s, when you were just gossiping on the topenehle, there wasn't a hundred engineers on the other side of the screen who knew exactly how your psychology worked and orchestrated you into a double bind with each other.

Open Cloze

Let me give you an example of Snapchat. If you didn't know, Snapchat is the ______ one way that teenagers in the ______ States communicate. So if you're like me, and you use text messages to communicate, Snapchat is that for teenagers, and there's, like, a hundred million of them that use it. And they invented a feature ______ ___________, which shows the number of days in a row that two people have communicated with each other. In other words, what they just did is they gave two people something they don't want to lose. Because if you're a ________, and you have 150 days in a row, you don't want that to go away. And so think of the little blocks of time that that schedules in kids' minds. This isn't theoretical: when kids go on vacation, it's been shown they give their passwords to up to five other friends to keep their Snapstreaks going, even when they can't do it. And they have, like, 30 of these things, and so they have to get through taking photos of just pictures or walls or ceilings just to get through their day. So it's not even like they're having real _____________. We have a __________ to think about this as, oh, they're just using Snapchat the way we used to gossip on the telephone. It's probably OK. Well, what this ______ is that in the 1970s, when you were just gossiping on the _________, there wasn't a hundred engineers on the other side of the screen who knew exactly how your psychology worked and orchestrated you into a double bind with each other.

Solution

  1. snapstreaks
  2. called
  3. united
  4. conversations
  5. telephone
  6. teenager
  7. misses
  8. temptation
  9. number

Original Text

Let me give you an example of Snapchat. If you didn't know, Snapchat is the number one way that teenagers in the United States communicate. So if you're like me, and you use text messages to communicate, Snapchat is that for teenagers, and there's, like, a hundred million of them that use it. And they invented a feature called Snapstreaks, which shows the number of days in a row that two people have communicated with each other. In other words, what they just did is they gave two people something they don't want to lose. Because if you're a teenager, and you have 150 days in a row, you don't want that to go away. And so think of the little blocks of time that that schedules in kids' minds. This isn't theoretical: when kids go on vacation, it's been shown they give their passwords to up to five other friends to keep their Snapstreaks going, even when they can't do it. And they have, like, 30 of these things, and so they have to get through taking photos of just pictures or walls or ceilings just to get through their day. So it's not even like they're having real conversations. We have a temptation to think about this as, oh, they're just using Snapchat the way we used to gossip on the telephone. It's probably OK. Well, what this misses is that in the 1970s, when you were just gossiping on the telephone, there wasn't a hundred engineers on the other side of the screen who knew exactly how your psychology worked and orchestrated you into a double bind with each other.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
control room 5
billion people 5
superhuman ability 4
control rooms 2
lab called 2
persuasive technology 2
technology lab 2
business model 2
human nature 2
hypothetical future 2
runaway artificial 2
lizard brain 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
persuasive technology lab 2

Important Words

  1. bind
  2. blocks
  3. called
  4. ceilings
  5. communicate
  6. communicated
  7. conversations
  8. day
  9. days
  10. double
  11. engineers
  12. feature
  13. friends
  14. gave
  15. give
  16. gossip
  17. gossiping
  18. invented
  19. kids
  20. knew
  21. lose
  22. messages
  23. million
  24. minds
  25. misses
  26. number
  27. orchestrated
  28. passwords
  29. people
  30. photos
  31. pictures
  32. psychology
  33. real
  34. row
  35. schedules
  36. screen
  37. shown
  38. shows
  39. side
  40. snapchat
  41. snapstreaks
  42. states
  43. teenager
  44. teenagers
  45. telephone
  46. temptation
  47. text
  48. time
  49. united
  50. vacation
  51. walls
  52. words
  53. worked