We’re a Generation of Skinner Pigeons

How social media companies use psychology to control your mind

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Have you heard of the Psychologist B.F Skinner?

He came up with something called Operant Conditioning, where he realized if he rewarded animals with food when they did a certain action, he could get them to do all kinds of crazy stuff. (Simplified explanation, but sufficient for our purposes).

Picture a pigeon in a box dancing to get food, or a pigeon playing ping pong! (not kidding)

An easy example of operant conditioning is teaching a dog to shake.

You wait for the dog to raise it’s paw, or try to gently guide it to raise it’s paw, and then you reward it with a treat.

Then you repeat the process over and over while saying the word “Shake”.

Now the dog obviously has no idea what the hell you’re saying…

But he realizes that when he hears the word “Shake”, if he puts his paw on your hand, he gets a treat. That’s all the motivation he needs to keep doing it, so the trick sticks.

And this is all well and good.

We all know how you can teach dogs a bunch of tricks, or even how circuses train elephants and lions in a similar way, but have you considered that we’re also being trained?

What if I told you that we’ve become a generation of pigeons in boxes, being trained into certain behaviors without even knowing it?

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I never considered how Skinner’s theories were being used against us until the other day when I was reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari.

It’s a great book about why our focus is diminishing as a society, and what we can do to reclaim our focus.

He was talking about B.F. Skinner, and said something that really sparked me to go and do my own research.

“Years later, the designers of Instagram asked: If we reinforce our users for taking selfies—if we give them hearts and likes—will they start to do it obsessively, just like the pigeon will obsessively hold out its left wing to get extra seed?”

That image made me uncomfortable…

I pulled out my journal and jotted down a note:

“We are a generation of skinner pigeons”.

I pictured all of us stuck in our own little Skinner boxes (a special box he would use to train animals), and we’re doing things that don’t make ANY sense, but that we’ve all been programmed to do.

The example Johann Hari gave, selfies, is a good one.

You would never walk into a home in 1950 and find someone had hung up their polaroid selfies all over the house…

And even when I was growing up in the nineties, we mostly used little Kodak disposable cameras for vacations and birthdays, and no one was holding the camera out at arms length to snap a picture of their outfit. That would be strange.

And while I don’t know many people with selfies all over their house, plenty of people have selfies all over their social media, not to mention hundreds of unposted ones in their camera roll.

It’s a strange kind of narcissism social media encourages us to have, constantly posting our thoughts (even if they’re based on nothing but opinion), our bodies, our food, etc.

And most of us have never stepped to think about why we’re doing it.

Social media creators have gotten us addicted to the positive feedback loop of posting for validation, or even scrolling for validation!

I mean, have you ever noticed that our phones are like mini slot machines?

You pull the page, wait for the refresh, and hope something good pops up in your newsfeed… this was by design.

And considering slot machines account for over 50% of casino revenue, it’s pretty clear they have an addictive pull.

I’ll end all this with another quote I heard recently, that again, made me uncomfortable with how I’m relating to tech, and social media.

“If something is free, you are the product”

There’s a reason social media is free… You pay with your attention.

You pay with your time, your energy, and your life.

And considering I don’t know anyone who gets done with a 30 minute social media binge and says “Wow I feel so alive!”… it might be time to change how much we’re paying.

I wish I could tell you that I’m a master at this, but I’m still a work in progress.

I still struggle to set my phone down, or find myself sucked into scrolling when all I wanted to do was check the weather…

But it’s about the awareness of what’s happening.

I’m a sovereign individual, and I value my freedom. So when I think about being a little pigeon in a box, pecking at my phone for likes and novelty, I feel righteous indignation.

I don’t want to be the person who spends 9 years of my life looking at my phone (the average nowadays).

I don’t want to be the person who pays more attention to social media than to their own kids.

And I don’t want to mindlessly follow the trends of the world, just because it gives me a few digital hearts on a screen, from people who don’t really care about me.

Social media isn’t all bad for sure. There are great aspects of it, when used with intention.

But don’t let them turn you into another Skinner pigeon.

Break out of the box, reclaim your attention, your time, your life… and consciously choose how much you’re willing to pay.

Thanks for reading,

— Josh