Gadgetory

Internet addiction sounds scary right but we live in a 24/7 information age where we use technology for both work and play for the insanely cool pocket computers we all rely on every single one of the services on our phones now plays on at least one psychological trope to reinforce our participation with that a per service beeps chirps and vibrations stimulus which trains us to react and we get that dopamine hit in our brains whenever a message like or reply arrives we're also seeing research suggesting that night time use of blue light might be interrupting our body's natural sleep rhythms tricking our brains into thinking it's daylight but one of the more anecdotal links between smartphone use and potentially addictive behavior might come down to just the colors that your smartphone screen can produce a lot of research has gone into the psychology between colors and emotions how our brains react to say the color red for example now it could be something primal baked into our DNA or it could just be a result of living in a society which uses that color to get your attention maybe we're just trained to respond to the color red but regardless our phones are insane little colored generating machines in addition to everything else going on on our phones could a color display be adding to that psychological whammy of getting sucked into internet apps and services well to test this I've been using myself as a guinea pig for the last week and I've switched my galaxy s7 over into black and white mode there are really easy settings to enable on both iOS and Android to activate this non color mode on Android for example you're going to have to enable developer settings first but once you have that open you're going to slide down to an option called simulate color space you're going to activate a mode called monochromacy Mahna crema c and phantom you now have a device that displays all of your content in grayscale the initial switch was extremely jarring I didn't realize how dependent I was on color to locate my favorite apps and services iconography means very little to me as I'm navigating around my phone screens I was just used to little blue splotch well that's where onedrive lives and ugly tie-dye splash that's where Instagram is now but it only took about a day for me to react limit and then start basing more of my phone navigation off of brute force of muscle memory as opposed to the visual eye candy I'm used to on these really pretty AMOLED displays now proponents of going monochrome claim that by eliminating color our brains won't be seeking the exact same kind of chained responses chain the gratification that when we open our phones to do one thing we don't find ourselves exhausting reddit two hours later curving all of these flashing colors all of these pretty lights should help reduce to a small but important degree the amount of distractions we face when interacting with mobile technology only using my phone this way for a week it's difficult for me to ascertain how my usage might have been altered though anecdotally I do find that my casual interactions with my phone tend to be a little bit shorter I seem to be more inclined to interact with one notification and then just turn my phone back off as opposed to looking for other things to do again anecdotally and that scientific body any stretch but I also seem to be ending each day in monochrome mode with a little bit more battery than I was used to I really don't think that monochrome mode uses less power on a phone like the galaxy s7 I really do think this could be because of shorter interactions with every time I turn the screen on now why you should take this with a huge lump rock of salt is I am fully aware of what it is that I'm testing and trying to achieve in altering my own behavior as a test subject in a psychological experiment of one sample person I honestly can't say whether I'm willing myself to use my phone less or if I actually am seeing an impact of no color on my screen subtly influencing my brain chemistry to tone down the gratification response of operating smartphone that brain chemistry is pretty tricky stuff and what I can say is I do seem to be experiencing the limit on the entertainment aspects of using my smartphone looking through Instagram for example black and white is stunning for photography but I don't have the same urge to go through deep dives of looking back through days of cataloged photos like I used to Instagram was an app that I very easily got lost in removing the color from my phone screen just seems to make it a little less fun and I absolutely don't have any interest in gaming on a monochrome display now as I mentioned before a one-week study with a sample size of one participant is hardly conclusive woefully inadequate to draw any kinds of answers from me doing this but it was a fascinating experiment especially just learning a little bit about my own behavior especially on that first day in turning the collar off and it's an experiment that you can easily conduct yourselves just to see how it might impact your behavior when using your phone when I'm in between review devices here at pocket now I think I'm gonna stick to this monochrome maseeh mode on my smart phones to see how it might affect my usage long term and I am reaching out to several colleges to see if I can get a proper psychiatrist on maybe we can have an interview a brief discussion about the the role of color and stimulus response and gratification on affecting our brain chemistry and dumping that dopamine because that stuff gets you high but seriously I think it would be fun to follow up with an actual expert in a couple months see if we can hammer out some of the differences between real science and then just sort of internet placebo discussion and stay tuned next month cuz we're gonna have another challenge for the month of July and I'm gonna be bringing high made Iveta on board for a little contest a photography contest and we're going to need our viewers and subscribers to vote on who wins as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more videos like these sharing is always greatly appreciated and hit that thumbs up button for a little extra positive reinforcement for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag mail you can chat me up on Twitter and Instagram has some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next video that brain chemistry's my brain chemistry's are pretty that brain chemistry is that that brain chemistry is pretty tricky stuff