Unwanted compulsive behaviors are forming from intrusive technology, I see it happening to me in my life and now I’m trying to avoid them.
A tiny aspect of modern technology that bugs me the most is the red badge with the number in them that appears next to icons on my iPhone. The now infamous alert bubble. When I see those badges I compulsively click on the icon, even when I picked up my phone to do something else. They have distracted me so many times. It’s even hard for me to consciously ignore them when I see them. They have made me form this unwanted compulsive behavior.
I even began to compulsively swipe my screen back and forth looking for apps with badges so I can click on them. It started driving me crazy, I would frequently find myself on Facebook or Instagram when I had no desire to check either just because there was a badge on their icons. To avoid these unwanted compulsive behaviors, I disabled all badges for social media apps and many other apps. It blows my mind how our technology trains us so well to the point we begin to do things very compulsively.