Treat 'Em Mean, Keep 'Em Scrolling

Hilary Jeffs Hello and welcome to Experience the New Weekly podcast where we get to psychoanalyse the news. We take what's going on in the world and use it as a reason for us to dissect human behaviour. with me on this psychological pilgrimage each week is the one and only Professor Peter Kinderman. Hello.

Peter Kinderman Hi there.

Hilary Jeffs How's your week been?

Peter Kinderman okay, so far we've got rid of scaffolding, so that's good.

Hilary Jeffs Well, you know, it's always a bonus if you don't have to see those, those pipes around your house. we had a very interesting week. We are waiting to hear about going to hospital for an operation on my middle child who's broken their leg. Quite spectacularly, really for someone who barely leaves the house, but there we go. right, first off this week I'd like you to introduce to us the concept of the week.

Peter Kinderman Okay, so it's a bit technical, but the concept of the week is variable ratio reinforcement, and it's what lies

Hilary Jeffs Sorry, sorry. Variable ratio reinforcement.

Peter Kinderman So it, it is what lies behind a lot of addiction, basically, at least the addiction, planned by corporate entities. So we, we've got a fox that comes to visit us, and it may or may not be a good thing to feed urban foxes, but we feed urban foxes. And if you want your fox to come reliably, the best thing you can do is to feed them like about somewhere between one time in three and two times in three. Not every time, and not never. If you feed 'em, never, they don't bother coming. If you feed them every time, then something interesting happens, which is that the fox learns that they get food. Every time. When you don't get food, the fox gives up and goes away. What you wanna do is keep the fox linked, keep the fox eager, keep the fox addicted. So what you do is you, you don't have it on a schedule, so it's not two days food, one day off. 'cause the fox will learn that and it won't be hooked. What you do is you have a variable ratio reinforcement where somewhere around one third of the time, more or less random, you get a reinforcement. If you go to the amusement arcade and you put your 10 p or your pound in, then you'll get a clunking and a return on your investment about one time in three. And it's hugely addictive. If you get reward every time, it's not addictive because when it doesn't happen, you then give up. If you get a reward every time and then it stops, you stop. If you don't get a reward at all, you so variable info reinforcement, and this lies behind. For instance, things like amusing videos on TikTok. About one time in you scroll, you scroll, you see something amusing. Then you scroll and you scroll and you scroll and you scroll and you see something amusing, and then you see something amusing and then you scroll. So a variable ratio of reinforcement about one in three keeps you hooked. of course the people behind these things know that.

Hilary Jeffs this is basically the psychological premise behind treat and mean to keep 'em keen.

Peter Kinderman Treat 'em a little bit. Mean a little bit randomly keep 'em on their toes and they'll keep coming back for more.

Hilary Jeffs How is it that every teenage boy knows to behave like this? Whereas girls are sort of like, oh no, we like you. I mean, I know I'm generalising, but on the whole it does tend to be that way. I, I think you're disagreeing. Maybe this really does, show the difference between people who are successful or not successful. Maybe I was just far too eager and maybe you were the ultimate. Treat them, man. Keep them keen kind of guy.

Peter Kinderman I I it, it may or may not apply to the sexual politics of adolescents. It probably does. It certainly applies to things like fruit machines, slot machines, gambling. It applies to the way that they programme the machines in Las Vegas. It applies to bet Fred and Coral on the high street. It applies to, and I think it very much applies to social media. So what you do is you set up the system to, it's not treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen. It, it's, you set up the system to maximise the likelihood that they'll come back for more. Because if you are the chief executive of TikTok, you need people to come back for more. So you need the system. The same probably applies to the whoever it is that writes the little tags on the most read versions of stories for the BBC news website, which is you've gotta get people to scroll through a bit, find a bit of reward, and then come back for some more on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule.

Hilary Jeffs It's the poo sandwich. This is what people do in companies, isn't it? Is that they squeeze in a really nasty bit of feedback where you absolutely need to improve your going on at the company with two lovely, nice nuggets, either side, the poo sandwich,

Peter Kinderman Yeah. Yeah. And if you, if, if you do it right then yeah, it is all curves and mathematics really. So if you do it right, you reward people at the right ratio, but not fixed. But where on average the ratio of reward is just about right to keep people coming back for more. And then, you know, you'll maximise your advert revenue and all of that sort of stuff.

Hilary Jeffs Well, we'll be discussing that a little bit in further detail, I think, 'cause we're gonna be talking later on about the meta trial that is going to be going on for the next five or six weeks over in America, where 29 states have taken meta to court. We're also gonna be talking about a hundred years of the weekend, my favourite time of the week and what that means for us. But we're gonna start straight off by the naming of storms. Now, can you please explain to me why the naming of storms is just so important and why it works for us from a psychological perspective?

Peter Kinderman Okay, so, so from a psychological perspective, what you've gotta do if you are running a Met office or if you are in charge of highways, in Gloucestershire or whatever, is you've got people, you've got to get people to act on information. and people on the whole are stupid and therefore, acting in their best interests, you need to put a bit of effort in, in order to get them to do it. So you tell people that there's a

Hilary Jeffs People on the hold are stupid.

Peter Kinderman Well,

Hilary Jeffs Just because we don't have your IQ does not make it stupid.

Peter Kinderman ai, I'm, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that other people are stupid compared to me. I'm saying that human beings are stupid compared to chat GPT. That's what I'm saying.

Hilary Jeffs Oh yeah.

Peter Kinderman So, you know, you say to people, you know, it's probably worth checking that your vex windows are shut. And they go, oh, nanny state and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what they do is they say, we, we need to warn people that you know, they need to make sure that things are teared down. And if they've got gutters that are full and empty the gutters and check on the neighbours and whatever it is that you need to do in terms of met office warnings, you really don't want people to get caught out because at the very least is expensive sending out fire brigade to go and get people from having their houses flooded and the worst people die. So it's worth getting people to take action. How do you get people to take action? You need to make them make it available. So you use all the heuristics, so you make things accessible, available, memorable. And if you name a storm, it just makes, it's a little nudge in, in the slight direction of you're slightly more likely to notice that there's a story. Maybe you won't even take it seriously. Maybe that's not the point. The point is you'll remember it and then you'll act on the information. So have you heard the storm warning? What storm warning is that? Well, it's a storm about one of the regular summer storm. No, it's storm either. And then you take, then you take action. So it's just to get things at the front of people's minds, I suppose. It's all about connectivity. You make things accessible, make things understandable, make things human, make things relatable. And then people are more

Hilary Jeffs and the Met Office clearly want to get customer engagement, you know, in these storms, because last Friday was the closing date for a competition. They were running where you could name the storm. They did it in conjunction with Ardman Studio. So it was a nice bit of pr puff, you could name the storm, either Sean the sheep, or his cousin Timmy, which I mean, they don't sound that threatening do they? For the first thing. So I'm not sure how much notice I take, but equally, it's really unlikely that we'll ever have a storm because usually they don't get that far along on the alphabet. They start at a, I think in 2024 they got as far as Al but really Sean, Timmy, it's not gonna work. What would you call the storm?

Peter Kinderman Oh, I'd call a storm VLA paler or something. Just make, no, I wouldn't, I'd, I'd call a short, the, the, the, I, I quite like the idea. I quite like the, it's not exactly regular 'cause it's kind of new. I like the idea of running through the alphabet and naming. I quite like the idea of obscure names, like, I dunno, Gwendolyn or something, just to, just slightly, and it will annoy everybody called Gwendolyn. But, you know, just,

Hilary Jeffs Are we going back to Armenta now?

Peter Kinderman Our ment. Yeah. I I, I, I think that, just, just to go back to the point of it is, I mean, brand awareness, maybe kind of marketing. I, I think like, like I say, it would be the, the reason why the Met office exists is a bit like other health and safety, which is ultimately it's worth the government investing in that agency in order to save quite a lot of money. And, you know, if you can avoid unnecessary insurance claims and calls for the council to come and clear blocked gutters, you know, blocked drains, if you could avoid Manchester Airport being shut down for an extra two hours by people taking some precautions about storms. I'm sorry, I don't wanna sound particularly boring, but it's a good thing to do. So you, you, you have a naming competition and it reminds people that actually some people who are reasonably good at maths, giving them some information that's useful for their wellbeing and financial probity.

Hilary Jeffs This does have a really big grounding in psychology as well, doesn't it? Because personification actually does work and we have a great history in naming things, don't we?

Peter Kinderman Boaty Boat, boat, face, Boaty book boat face is wonderful.

Hilary Jeffs 20 25, 1 of the public actually suggested Stormy McStorm face as one of the storms, which I liked, although they were missing a trick 'cause they could have done Stormy Daniels. My favourite from 2025 was, Dame Judy Drench. That was pretty good. There was a David Blowy.

Peter Kinderman very good around Manchester, when, when it falls to winter, they send around the, the griddle of it and of course all the glitter, the griddle of it all named amusing names for kind of the same reason. I think it's good. I, I, yeah, it's just a good thing and I know that, yeah, there are people probably of my generation who are going, you, in the past when it rained, it just rained and we put up with the rain and now we've got, we've got storm warnings and you know, there was a storm warning last week and there were only about three children drowned. It, it, yeah. We are getting ridiculous here. I think it's quite good to remind us to shut the ox windows. It's quite a good

Hilary Jeffs doing it since 2015, but in America, they first started, naming storms just after the second World War. So I mean, it is, it is got quite a good establishment. Now there is a push that we need to name heat waves, which I can actually get behind. There have been 25,000 excess deaths already, not including August figures for across Europe, which is is going some I think, and the heat waves, they do it in Spain. Should we do it here as well?

Peter Kinderman Yes, on one condition,

Hilary Jeffs Okay.

Peter Kinderman and the one condition is that we name heat waves after ludicrous right-wing politicians who deny climate change.

Hilary Jeffs Okay, well there is also a lobby to name them after the fossil fuel companies, and I've got a new bid now 'cause I'm rivalling your politicians who deny climate change and I'm raising you AI companies, data centres, and all the use of water. What do you reckon?

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I, I absolutely agree. Yeah. You get, you get a headline that says 21,000 people killed by Heatwave Exxon. Yeah. Quite right too. So I would say yes. And I like your named after, yeah. Fossil Fuel Companies. I, I approve.

Hilary Jeffs Okay, well we've sorted out the world yet again. That's what I really like. moving swiftly on to weekends. The weekend is a hundred years old. do you know how the weekend came about? The two day weekend, Peter?

Peter Kinderman I do not so enlighten me.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, it was Henry Ford Ford. He was a bit of a radical guy. he radically put up their wages in 2019 of his workers, over doubled it to $5 a day. and he actually decreased their working day from nine hours to eight as well at the same time. And people thought he was crazy. But what he realised was that with the advent of the, industrialization process within his factories, he absolutely shrunk the amount of time. I think it took 12 hours to make a car and it was a real skilled specialist job, and he smashed that down to 97 minutes to make one car. And his whole purpose, it wasn't entirely altruistic, is that your best customers are your workforce. So he wanted to empower his workforce so they could buy more of his product, but actually he also managed to retain staff because people did not want to work in that really boring environment where it was just so repetitive. And of course, we've got similar challenges coming down the line with ai, which we can talk about in a little bit. But in 1926, he let his workforce have two days off a week. Psychologically, there's quite a lot of benefits to a two day weekend, isn't there?

Peter Kinderman absolutely. And, I mean, one of the things to reflect on is that, well, so if, if the world were organised along the principles that I think you value, then as we get increased technological benefits, then there genuinely will be labour saving and will reduce the amount of time that we work. we haven't seen much of that. I think one of the technical reasons why we haven't is that what's happened as we've increased the, you know, technological productivity of the economy is that it's made the economy less equal. And so we're not sharing out the benefits of technological advantage. What we're doing is creating more profits for the shareholders. and that's, you know, a different mechanism. so I think that part of the move towards, you know, two day weekends rather than working on Saturdays is we're spending less time and less effort growing food. We're spending less time and less effort and less money manufacturing objects that we need, and therefore we have more, more time. and it's hugely beneficial for us. There was an, an article written. it was the early 1930s, I think. So it would've been just after the introduction of the Weekend by Bertand Russell, Bertand Russell being, you know, a great British philosopher, in praise of leisure. And what he was talking about was, well, so if you go back a little bit earlier than that, one of the things that I think is a, a general negative was that during early Victorian times, the, the sort of theological moralists decided that they would try to convince the working people that time was a gift given by God. And therefore, if you weren't using your time productively, you were somehow blasphemous or at least doing it wrong. So the concept of wasting time came in. Now, you know, it's true that we have only got a limited lifespan and therefore, you know, doing stuff with that time that we have is a good thing. What Bertan Russell wrote about is that there are a lot better things that you can do with your time than work, and he meant that quite seriously. It wasn't like, you know, you're working for other people and, you know, have a bit of hedonism for yourself. He was talking, and I agreed with him on this. He was talking about the liberal arts. So, you know, there's stuff that you can read. You can go to the theatre, you can, you can make yourself physically fit, you can spend time talking with friends. You can have discussions, you can read newspapers, you can get involved in the discussions of the day, you know, a bit like the ancient Greeks. You can go to the theatre and in a participatory manner, you can run through the big questions that you could start doing podcasts. So with your time, instead of putting a rivet in a hole and waiting for your, colleague to hit it with a hammer, what you could be doing is studying the Odyssey and seeing how close to the original Christopher Nolan's vision is. And, and.

Hilary Jeffs now we know how you unwind at the weekend. We are so much better

Peter Kinderman Exactly. So, yeah. yeah. Well, yeah, I do actually. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah, I, but I think the point is that that leisure and those things that we do in our leisure time are socially and morally valuable and we should be doing more of it. You know, I mean, I know when politicians resign, it is always to spend more time with their children. But actually spending time with people is a good thing. Having intellectual con, well intellectual, but having, having meaningful conversations with people about things that matter, engaging with our friends, taking time to appreciate the world around us. These are all genuinely valuable activities,

Hilary Jeffs Speaking as someone who's spent an awful lot of time with her children, may I just say that time with children and leisure time, they don't actually coexist at the same time. Certainly not when they're younger. so there you go. That speaks a, a volume as to what my experience of bringing up three under three was actually like.

Peter Kinderman Time with books, but books are good and

Hilary Jeffs no, and actually I taught them to read. It was the best thing that I ever did was to be, get them to become avid readers. Although annoyingly now their vocabulary is better than mine, which is, it's kind of bittersweet really. I think you can say. the weekends are interesting, what you say about using it for good or, or making the most of it. They did a survey a couple of years back where they asked people to treat their weekend like they were on holiday. And when they got back, they found out after the weekend that the people who had been told to treat it like a proper holiday actually reported a lot better wellbeing. So maybe that should be a national campaign on a Friday. Everyone should go, we've got a weekend, we've got a holiday, we've got to enjoy it. And really, instead of letting it drift, I mean, we've all had those weekends where by the time you've washed the floors and you know, cleaned a loo and sort of fed people, that it doesn't feel like you've had any downtime at all. And what you are saying is if you can meaningfully do things that make you feel like you are spending it in a worthwhile way, which doesn't have to be kind of worthy, does it, although that's also very good for your wellbeing to do things for other people.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I, I think there's, there's a question of worthy and worthy, but I think so, so you say meaningful and, and I agree with you, but, but there's also an element of, purposeful. So I think the idea of, of saying, what do I want to do tomorrow? What I shall do tomorrow is I'll go for a walk on jol to knees. I'll go at 10 o'clock. What's the weather forecast like? Yeah. Looks like that's a good idea. That's what I'll do probably better than going right. I'm bored. maybe I'll go for a walk. I'm not sure if I can be bothered. So I think it's the purposeful and I think, you know, sitting down and reading a book because, you intend to read the book rather than I'm bored, oh, I'll pick up that leaflet about the Jehovah's Witnesses and read it 'cause I'm bored. So it's the purpose, purpose of making a decision that you are going to do something and then doing it, which I think is particularly, yeah, particularly, useful. I think I was just reflecting on the fact that one of the things that we do in our house is, is that of course we watch television 'cause we, we're not idiots, but we have our television inside a cupboard, which

Hilary Jeffs I always like that.

Peter Kinderman which annoys our daughter quite a lot. What it means is that you don't

Hilary Jeffs big cupboard though these days.

Peter Kinderman What it means is that you don't go, I'll just press the on button and see what's on telly. You have to take a little bit of a step in order to, so you decide I want to watch something, and then you watch it and, you know, you go around to people's houses. certainly when I was, you know, working more frequently as a psychologist and I go around to people's houses and with the TV consistently on, you haven't

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, but it becomes like a friend, doesn't it? When you get older and if you've got a house and you're rambling around it all on your own, that's when you find people have multiple TVs. My dad used to have like three on at any one time, so there was always a voice when he went into any room. It's so sad, isn't it really that that's what you need, but it is a big comfort blanket for people.

Peter Kinderman I, I used to do that a lot with Radio Four, so I had radio four, more or less. I even, I even listened to the Arche. Well, I didn't listen to the Arches. You don't,

Hilary Jeffs just on its background,

Peter Kinderman there. and that, you know, it's nicer to have Radio four in the background than having a silent house. I think there's something about tv, but because it's visual, you have to sit down and the minute you sit down in front of the tv, then basically your life is over. So I, I, I do think there's a moral distinction between listening to the radio and watching tv.

Hilary Jeffs I'm not sure TV holds the same allure that it once did. Now that we have social media, which we'll come onto in a minute, but we are careering towards a four day week, I think a three day weekend. When is there gonna be too much downtime? Because if with AI, maybe we're all gonna go to seven days a week off, I mean, really, is that gonna be any good for us to leave us without a purpose?

Peter Kinderman Yeah, but it doesn't leave us without a purpose. I mean, it absolutely doesn't leave us without a purpose for, for, for loads of reasons. I mean, it could, and I'm sure that there are people who are already very wealthy who'd quite like us, to leave all of the tasks to the machinery and to do absolutely nothing apart from consume their revenues. but if, if I spent my time doing no work at all, I don't think I would have a pointless life. I think I would do lots of things. And this is back to Bert and Russell, which is there, there were book I just started reading to Kill a Mock Mockingbird, which shamefully I haven't read. So.

Hilary Jeffs That's just my favourite book. It's

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I've read lots of books. It's just I haven't read that one. Okay. It's just don't, just don't need to, yeah, don't go. What? It's just one of many books I haven't read.

Hilary Jeffs Can't believe you didn't read it. We had

Peter Kinderman We, no, no. Hang on. We,

Hilary Jeffs as well.

Peter Kinderman Hillary, we are not gonna get into competitive book listing. It is not, that's not a thing we're going

Hilary Jeffs We are not having a book club. Peter, I wouldn't be able to keep up with

Peter Kinderman my point is that if I had total freedom from any form of work whatsoever, then you know, I'm not gonna have a meaningless life. I'm gonna read lots of books and

Hilary Jeffs But not everyone is the same as you,

Peter Kinderman Well, okay.

Hilary Jeffs And, and we are getting to a point where it is, for the first time ever, that AI is potentially going to absolutely rip

Peter Kinderman Yeah. But

Hilary Jeffs of white collar workers, which is not, you know, previous revolutions. It hasn't really hit those people so much, but we are absolutely heading towards perhaps something that is a calamity, maybe.

Peter Kinderman Well, I think we should at another time talk about whether AI is a calamity or not. And it might be, and it's, it's perfectly possible. It's calamity. There's lots of calamities. Climate change is a calamity. Nuclear war is a calamity. global pandemics a calamity. There's, it's quite possible that AI is a, is a calamity. But I think the idea of freeing people from work doesn't have to be a clary. And I, I would absolutely, as a socialist take issue with the idea that working people need to work in order to have meaning in that, no, we could construct a society in which when we are freed from the necessity of labour, we are doing things that are meaningful and productive and, you know,

Hilary Jeffs But meaningful and productive often involves money. I've just had the, subscription renewal for the local art gallery in Chichester, you know, and you just think, oh, there you go. There's another chunk of money that's gone outta my account. And, and I don't even get there that often,

Peter Kinderman Yeah,

Hilary Jeffs I think it's a good thing to do. But my point is it's not free to do these things. Well. We need to have like a universal minimum wage. I think Iceland, they

Peter Kinderman Yeah,

Hilary Jeffs did give everyone 25 grand, I think it

Peter Kinderman I'm a power, I'm a strong supporter of the idea of, basic, basic income. and I think that it would, it, it, it would make people more productive other than less. And we, and again, I mean, that's maybe something that we should talk about in the, in the future. I mean, I think there are caveats. So, so I think that, this is what I think about many things, which is it depends on how we collectively organise these things. So if what we do is we introduce increasing, especially AI productivity, that makes the production of the stuff that we need in society that much cheaper. And what it means is that oligarchs can make a bigger profit, but people are left with low income because they're out of a job and high priced goods, including services that they then can't afford because of the AI revolution, then that's obviously terrible. If, on the other hand, we have an equitable system of management managing this, this process. And all of us end up with on average working one day a week and spending the other six days living the sort of life that we would ideally live if we were some sort of Pericles, character, you know, good in everything and admirable in all aspects of, of their, their life. We'd spend more time with our grandkids and we'd spend more time, understanding the world and we'd be,

Hilary Jeffs You've just had grandparents up and down the country running screaming, saying, please, no, I can't do any more childcare.

Peter Kinderman I'd not say that. No, no, because we'd, we'd have a robot doing the childcare. What we'd be doing is, is interacting with, I, I think if we use it well, I think you know more. Yeah. I, I would celebrate leisure. One of the things that I thought when I was younger was I thought, Ugh, is it gonna be difficult to be retired? Am I gonna get bored? Then I had this sort of, kind of understanding that, in asking that question, I'm almost certainly answering it in the, in the same words, the point being that I don't like being bored. So if I've got nothing to do, I will fill my day with something which is not boring, and maybe, maybe that's reading, or maybe it's building a beehive, or maybe it's going to investigate something that I've not done before. Or maybe it's going in seeing friends, or maybe it's taking up a new hobby. But no, I, I think that, that, that we can fill that time with the stuff that makes us human extremely well. So, no, I'm in favour of, absolutely in favour of less work, more leisure. Definitely.

Hilary Jeffs I do find that I don't get bored because I can sort of poodle away and, and fill my time with anything. I can always think about something that's perhaps one of my greatest, achievements or should we say procrastinations? I, I'm not entirely sure, but you say we can fill our time. Yes. However, so my husband was really quite successful in his career and when he retired, first of all he did a succession of courses to learn more things. But actually as he's got through and ticked off the list, the learning, extra learning he wants to be doing there is still a gap because there isn't the same, the same kind of goals to achieve. I think he's quite a goal orientated person. What are we gonna do when we have to set all our own goals? That's what's gonna be difficult, I think, for people.

Peter Kinderman clearly we need to set up a company offering people quite expensive courses in personal goal setting that,

Hilary Jeffs in.

Peter Kinderman yeah, I mean, well, look, hang, hang,

Hilary Jeffs got our future sorted.

Peter Kinderman yeah, and, and I mean obviously I'm, I'm joking, but there is an element whereby we have to adjust to the world that we find ourselves in. And that means learning how to accommodate ourselves to the realities of life. And I think the idea of, you know, is, is civics again, isn't it? It's this idea of, you know, so there are things we do at school to prepare kids for, for the world in which they're living. And I think that the idea

Hilary Jeffs Oh, no, hold on. That's all stopped.

Peter Kinderman yeah, exactly.

Hilary Jeffs them all that stuff. And, and really it's a, a shocking shame look, we stopped doing cookery lessons and people started getting fat. I mean, really.

Peter Kinderman yeah, so when I started to have discussions at work about retirement, it was basically all right, Pete Slingy your hook. There wasn't an element of, you know, maybe you'd like to, to join the, the local newly retired folks club so that you can learn how to do retirement properly. I mean, it is true that I go outta the pub with my friends and we talk about how to do it, and we're quite good at it, I think. so I think it will

Hilary Jeffs always the University of the third age. That's the club isn't there. Or saga,

Peter Kinderman yeah. All, all of this is possible. and I would personally, I would happily avail myself of it. At the moment. I have too much to do and I, I, I, I, you know,

Hilary Jeffs And long may it be that way. Moving forward, then we've touched on AI and what it means, and we've also talked a little bit about addiction with your concept of the week. our final headline this week is talking about the meta trial in America. 29 states are suing meta, is quite an interesting one. Meta also took a hammering in New Mexico not very long ago, at the beginning of this month where I think it's something like 700,000 pounds. They've 700, sorry, 700 million pounds they have been sued for, which is quite extraordinary amount of time. And it's all centred around the addictive nature of their platform and what they are suing. metaphor this time is $1.4 trillion. That's the worst case scenario mind you. But in paper money that would take you around the world three times. Thank you very much. BBC's newscast for that nice little tip and hint there, they're only worth 1.5 trillion, so it would absolutely spark the end of meta, which may not be a bad thing at the end of the day. Meta, obviously, they are saying that the cases without merit, that they do take appropriate action to ensure young people are not, kept on this rollercoaster that is social media and that they have not put profit before people. so that's their opinion. but we are getting quite an intensive battle going on at the moment. And psychologists are at the heart of this, aren't they? The psychologists are giving evidence and saying that young people are being harmed. Can you give me a rundown really about how something like social media ends up being addictive? Because to my mind you always think of addiction as as biological. And I think that's wrong, isn't it? It it stems from the psychology and social media. Does it trigger the same sort of biological processes as we get from drugs and alcohol?

Peter Kinderman yeah. So I mean, I mean, opinions differ on this and, and, you know, in terms of understanding human nature, when you, when you move towards the people who have a sort of more reductionist biological approach, then they'll talk about dopamine hits and yeah, they'll talk about, some people will, will give expert evidence arguing that physiological responses to physiological substances have a different impact than psychological addiction and so forth. my colleagues.

Hilary Jeffs It sounds like we're getting into that whole tobacco debate now.

Peter Kinderman exactly. My, I mean the colleagues that, that I used to work with, I mean, I've not done primary research on addiction myself, but I have worked with, and I've been, you know, head of department for people who've done work on addictions and at least at Liverpool, the, the argument was going that if it's something that's rewarding, then it's gonna be addictive, you know, you'll do it again. So if you put, like, like I was saying earlier, if you put our fox on a variable ratio, reinforcement schedule expecting food, then she'll come back in a way, which is, it's very difficult now for her to shake the habit of good 'cause I like say the fox of a evening league. So yeah, that's the purpose

Hilary Jeffs Your neighbours don't have chickens, do they? My husband started feeding a fox and and then about a week later, the neighbor's chickens got

Peter Kinderman Yeah, it's, it's in the nature of foxes that they eat chickens and, and I realise it's not in the nature of foxes that they get fed by cat food every third day. But, yeah. No, I appreciate, I appreciate that. I've had a scout round for chickens and haven't seen any, so. Mm. And anyway,

Hilary Jeffs no, ' cause the trucks has eaten them all.

Peter Kinderman Because, because the fox is the, anyway, so,

Hilary Jeffs The fox is full, is your opinion,

Peter Kinderman yeah.

Hilary Jeffs doesn't need to eat the chickens.

Peter Kinderman I, I, yeah. The cat food is not a drug that's, that's causing addiction in the fox. It's, is, is the interplay between the goal of eating food and the, you know, the fact that when you've eaten food, you've achieved a goal and the repeat behaviour. And so, I mean, anything that, you know, is, is a desired goal state for us will be addictive. So yes, drugs and chemicals and food and pornography and, the applause of one's friends and getting, you know, kids, especially boys get, get really addicted by causing laughter in the classroom. It's, you know, it's hugely addictive for them. And I remember going to a Carroll concert once where this, this kid standing up on stage doing the most ridiculous kind of outrageous dance and causing people to giggle and utterly ridiculous. I mean, totally addicted to his own foolishness. So I think the idea that, you know, if it is something that

Hilary Jeffs Is probably one of my kids. You know that, don't you?

Peter Kinderman quite possibly, yeah, very, very, very good looking. Oh, man. Anyway, so I, I think the idea of, of it being addictive, so if I was giving, well, first of all, I don't think I would give expert evidence in a case like that because my, you know, research background is not in the field of either social media or addiction. But, I have a, I would be very surprised and it would strike me as a slightly unjust outcome if the outcome of this court case isn't that absolutely these things are want of a more useful word, addictive, and it's doing harm to kids. And we see it repeatedly. We see evidence being brought forward by authoritative figures about how time on screen is doing harm to kids, about how physically time on screen is doing harm to kids sleeping and kids' attention. How their use of the mobile phones is affecting their attention, their, their memories bad and so forth. there's bullying. There's the disruption of, social relationships. There's just simply the time spent on screen. Then there's the risks posed by exposing yourself to the sort of contact that you have with people through the messaging on the apps. And, you know, I know I've got a phone. I look at these things and I, I, I, I'm a cheaps skate, so I don't tend to pay for stuff. So I get, I get ads come through and they have stopped recently, but I used to get a lot of ads that said, try this new game. It's the most addictive thing you've ever seen in your life. And they were very blatant about the fact that these things were Yeah. And people were saying, you know, I can't stop. There's the doom scrolling. I think all of the evidence strikes me that the two things are going on, which is the, the systems that we use on our phones are hugely addictive. And secondly, that that is doing us collectively harm. And then I suppose the third element. Particularly so for children. I mean, it

Hilary Jeffs Why is it particularly so for children? Why are they so much more susceptible?

Peter Kinderman Well, I think first of all, I think a lot of the apps that we're talking about are particularly, habit forming if you have the time and the lack of other requirements in order to be habit forming. So it's possible to sit in the back of a car scrolling through TikTok, laughing on a variable ratio, reinforcement pattern of funny videos, and do nothing else for the entire car journey. But you obviously can't if you're driving and you can't if you're working and

Hilary Jeffs Some people try, unfortunately.

Peter Kinderman Some people try. and I think kids, I think it's just a fact that kids find it more difficult to shift their perspective from themselves to other people. It's more difficult for them to, you know, move from, I can have it and I want it, therefore I'll do it to, I need to balance that with other, perspectives. I think they're, they're less likely to be able to defer gratification, pause, think about the long-term consequences. think about whether they want to forego this pleasure right now in favour of a greater pleasure later, and kids are just worse at all of those quite important tasks. They also don't know stuff, so, you know, adults know things about how, older adults will pretend to be 1314 in order to befriend people on social media for various nefarious purposes. And kids simply don't know that 'cause they don't read the same reports and websites and news stories. And so.

Hilary Jeffs the main whistleblower from Meta, basically got fired up to come and, and be the chief prosecutorial, witness because of the experience of his own daughter, where she was sent nude pics and where you could, she found that it was virtually, you know, completely ineffectual to try and flag this to meta and the bullying that she, undertook as well when she, well, not, she undertook that she happened to her while she was on these platforms. so he's really gotta be in his bonnet. it is quite a difficult thing because with the trial, with, as well as the find that meta is possibly gonna end up having to pay if it's found guilty, it's gonna have to change its processes. So all those things that make social media, social media, the likes and the auto play functions are gonna get taken away and it'll be interesting to see whether young people still are

Peter Kinderman Yeah, well here. So, so I've got a car and it's got a sat nav and you're in the car and you're driving and, and sat Nav comes up and you go, Ooh, I think I'll just call in a little. And you press the search button and the screen goes blank. And it says, don't use the search button when you're driving. And I think to myself, yeah, absolutely. 'cause I could find a little on the way home or die. I, I think I'll choose. Let's wait. So, so I think that as adults, there are loads of things that we do where we de, I mean this is, it also speaks to kind of, kind of populist American politics as well. if we require through a court case that Meta or TikTok or whoever change their algorithms so that we can no longer do the thing that we're doing, that we really enjoyed doing a minute ago, then yes, that that will be a restriction on their freedom to make a product that does whatever it is that they want to do and make money out of us. And it will restrict our freedom to look at videos of fat people falling over. However, the benefits will be enormous. And, you know, that's what we do in civilised societies. What we don't do is to say, it would benefit me to have a look at your iPhone. My iPhone decide that your iPhone is smarter and newer than my iPhone. So I'll just nick it. No, we have rules that say that's not what we do. We could do that, but we will choose not to do that thing because it's in everybody's best interest for us to have a few kind of civilised rules about it. And we haven't developed those rules about AI and and about, social media. And it is possible to give five year olds the possibility to accept WhatsApp messages from every anybody on the planet. But it is really bad idea to do that. Let's have some rules to regulate our own behaviour.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things that was the outcome I think from the New Mexico child, is that they were not allowing adults anymore to message children. It's like, well you would like to think that that was something that everyone was in, in agreement with and you didn't need a court to mandate it. But it has been a really wild West time. I personally think since the start of the internet, because I understood this democratisation of information, was to try and make it available to everyone. And you know, largely I am in favour of non censorship. I'm in favour of free speech, but we've got children and there are rules that protect children from drinking, from gambling, you know, and internet use really should be no different to that. We've got our own court case coming up, or our own laws coming through next year, aren't they? which will hopefully really change social media and how that interacts for people. and perhaps meta could have made some bigger changes before this court case came along, but they are determined, aren't they, to keep fighting these cases.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, well, they will because they're making money out of it, or I don't know what the profit and loss situation is, but they're trying to make money out of it. I mean, it, it's a commercial business then they're, people like meta, in my opinion, are not making products in order to make the world a better place. They're making products in order to make money. They, they, they want to have a profitable business. And, you know, in some ways you could argue that it's absolutely fine. You know, what we generally do in society is we, we let people do things and people can do whatever they want unless it harms other people. And we are finding out the, the unfettered use of social media and the internet and so forth and mobile phones, it turns out, is causing people harm. Therefore, you bring in some restrictions on it. You know, it's the same as the gin craze in the 18th century. And they go, well, it is just a food

Hilary Jeffs down my lane.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, it's just a food stuff. You know, if you, if you wanna make gin in your, in your bath, that's absolutely fine, unless it turns out that it's harming people. Now we realise it's harming people. We need to regulate the alcohol industry. Absolutely fine. In, in my opinion, that's kind of what civilised you can drive your car, whatever speed you like, wherever you want on the road. Oh no, that's gonna harm people. Maybe we need speed limits and rules about like maybe a highway code. Good idea.

Hilary Jeffs Oh, Peter, you are just so involved with the nanny state.

Peter Kinderman Exactly. Well,

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I'm all for it myself if people are gonna live, frankly, but.

Peter Kinderman I, I, I like treating children with a bit of care.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, me too. You know, they are our future after all. Oh, it sounds like a song. before we wrap up for the week, Peter, as ever, you will have a tip for us to try a little nugget of wellbeing that will help us in our daily lives cope more easily. What is your tip this week?

Peter Kinderman So I've, I've written down on my little bit of paper set limits and I, I

Hilary Jeffs I'm bad at this.

Peter Kinderman exactly, and so that's all it is. And, I've done a couple of things recently. The one is, I, I've, I've permitted my phone to show me, screen time, which is my screen time isn't great. I mean, I'm, I'm a, my, my brain is just as kind of sensitive to the external pressures on it as anybody else's. And so I, you know, I'm, I'm not going, well, I understand how addictive processes work and I understand the negative consequences of social media, therefore I'm immune. No, I understand these things and therefore I have to set limits. So you have to set limits on your, on your time doing things. And I set reminders. So I think the idea of saying we are exposed to all of these pressures, therefore we'll set limits. So, you know, I will set a limit of 30 minutes for social, social media use, or I won't use my phone after a certain period of time. Or, and, and other

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, but I can't do this thing where you put your phone away before bed because I'm like, well, it's my alarm and if I wake up, I want to put on the next story for me to listen to so I can go back to sleep. It is that sad.

Peter Kinderman Yes. No, no. So I'm in exactly the same position. So, so my point isn't, you are in the wrong, I'm in the right. I'm brilliant. You are not, and my point isn't, you have to set limits, but I don't have to. My point is we should all set limits and me too. So the point here is that, I mean, my tip for the week isn't, I don't need to, but you plebs need to follow my advice. No, my tip for the week is I also need to set limits. I need to put my phone away. I need to, you know, restrict my screen time on things I need to have a choice about. I need to make active choices about when I use things. You know, no phones at the dinner table kind of thing. That those are the limits that we need to apply to ourselves, and I'm as bad as anybody else. What I find incidentally is that my, my, my use of these things does a sort of scallop up that I have to remind myself together, that it's scallops up at it. And I find myself, we have a co we we're sitting down, we're eating dinner, we have a conversation about something and we go, Hmm, I should just check that. And so, so the

Hilary Jeffs That's when it does come out. Yes. No,

Peter Kinderman then you put the limits back in.

Hilary Jeffs But limits are not just for social media. I feel sometimes I need to have more limits in my life. Generally, I need to be able to say no and set limits with other people. It doesn't just stop at the tech.

Peter Kinderman It doesn't stop a tech. you say, say no to other people. incidentally, completely related to what the point earlier. so a post-retirement flurry of things, I, I, I got myself a lathe and, and I enjoy working with my hands with wood. And then people go, Ooh, you should sell that. And I'm going, no, I don't want to turn it into a business. I just, I just want to do it as a leisurer. So there's

Hilary Jeffs expect to see a little exhibition next week of the latest things that you've turned with your

Peter Kinderman I'm looking in the background to see if there's anything there. I'll, I'll, I'll find you. I'll find you. Something to, to show you. no.

Hilary Jeffs It's probably a giant bee that you've made.

Peter Kinderman yeah, be, be, be. Bees aren't circular, so you can't turn the B

Hilary Jeffs can you by the way, stop picking up the bees because, husband is actually very seriously considering getting bees now.

Peter Kinderman Well, we have a lot of hives at the moment because our bees swarmed, so I, I can give you a colony. So yeah, just let him know that you can have a readymade colony with a mated queen, cheap price. easily available. what was I saying? yeah, so my point is I don't want to do these things, things for money. So I'm setting limits even when it comes to working. so yeah, I think it's, alcohol. You set limits. Just, just it's keep, keep things in proportion because you see, I think I've probably, if such things exist, I think I'm probably more prone to getting addicted to things than the average person.

Hilary Jeffs No, I think that for

Peter Kinderman I set limits.

Hilary Jeffs well, my dad went up to 80 cigarettes a day when he was alive. Ooh. The house stunk, you can imagine. and then went cold Turkey and gave up and was totally fine. Whereas my mother, who, you know, I think capped about 11 cigarettes in a day, she took a couple more years to give up on those little sneaky ones that she would partake of every now and then. But because of that, it's always made me really cautious, you know, not to get involved in gambling or hard drugs because I worry that I will be the next person that's on the street lying there with a, with a duvet over me. Luckily,

Peter Kinderman Yeah, my, my, my, my weak spot is that, that, because I think I'm clever. I, I think I can work out the maths of gambling and then, so, so, so I never gamble because I'd get a, I would get drawn into it, but no, the, the point is, I'm not saying set limits because plebs need to set limits, but I'm wonderful. I set limits for myself. And I,

Hilary Jeffs And we all need to.

Peter Kinderman and we all need to, partly because life is as life is, partly because we live in an abundance society and we can always order a jar of doci dichi from Amazon, and that's like death. And because people who own large companies would really quite like us not to set limits on our behaviour, because then they'd more make more profit out of

Hilary Jeffs And we don't want them to win, do

Peter Kinderman We don't want them to win. No.

Hilary Jeffs Alright. Well, thank you very much for this week. Join us next week when we will be having more forays into the feelings of people and why we behave the way that we do. Nice to see you, Peter. Thank you.

Peter Kinderman Thank you very much.

Hilary Jeffs The Experience Podcast is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Peter Kinderman, produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. You can find us on social media and you can get in touch by email at hello@experiencepodco.com with any questions or comments or topics you'd like us to cover. And don't forget to leave us a review.