"Now online, they don't want you to go back down to calm. Because once you get back down to calm, you can engage the part of your brain that's logical and rational, and you go actually I've had enough time online. They keep you in an active emotional state."
#KathrynBerkett, educational psychologist, 2025
Presumably when Berkett says "they" she's referring to DataFarmers, as illustrated in The Social Dilemma. But it did make me stop and wonder, to what degree are fediverse apps inadvertently mirroring this relentless emotional activation, and other harmful patterns implicit in the DataFarms we're aiming to replace?
Maybe as well as accessibility - or as part of it - we need to be emphasing emotional wellness in our app designs? Eg asking whether infinite scroll is a sensible default.
*cough* infinite scroll *cough*
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@Blort ; ) I really like the way Enafore gives me the option to disable infinite scroll. But I'd like it better if that was the default, and infinite scroll was opt-in. Along with any others features that can lead to relentless emotional activation.
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What made me start using third-party was when I first set up a #Mastodon account, and found myself in the overwhelming sensory nightmare of the original 3-column layout. I noticed almost immediately how grumpy it made my posting, and how many more flame wars I got into than when I was on quitter.se (GNU social + Qvitter). Because it was keeping me in relentless emotional activation.
I'm really glad the default Mastodon UI now is a more sane, minimalist one-column layout.
Kathryn Berkett gave a talk on 'Neuroscience of Device Zombies' at TEDxTauranga;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrOddAuNau8
It was excluded from the library of TEDX talks on the official TED website, which tells you everything you need to know about their biases.
If you can get hold of a copy of the video, maybe you could publish it on a PeerTube service? I'd love to see TEDX organizers creating PT channels to publish all the talks from their events.
Link please @antijingoist! Any talk shadowbanned by the technofeudalism apologists at TED is one I want to see ; )
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