Stephen Lam | Reuters
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks onstage during the annual Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, May 8, 2018.
Google’s former design ethicist Tristan Harris developed a presentation five years ago that warned people inside Google of five human psychology vulnerabilities that tech products were too often exploiting.
The presentation is called “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” and it suggests that tech firms are abusing our natural psychological weaknesses to keep us addicted to apps, websites, phones and more. The Verge published all 141 slides written by Harris on Thursday.
In the presentation, Harris suggested that Google, Apple and Facebook should “feel an enormous responsibility” to make sure humanity doesn’t spend its days buried in a smartphone.
Five years later, it appears that Google is starting to take his recommendations seriously. On Tuesday, the company announced “digital wellness” improvements coming to the next version Android that will help people check their phones less — for instance, there’s a way to turn off visual notifications (not just audible sounds) and a mode that gradually turns off color on the phone to make it less tempting to scroll through apps before bedtime.
These are the five human vulnerabilities Harris discussed.