Latest news with #AdamClarkEstes
Vox
31-07-2025
- Business
- Vox
The surprisingly sound financial advice I got from a chatbot
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Recently, as an experiment, I gave a bunch of my financial information to an AI chatbot. I know what you're thinking — it sure doesn't sound like the wisest move. While the large language models that power such bots are good at many things, math is not historically one of them. Still, a growing number of startups are training generative AI tools to work like financial coaches. Some of them are pretty good, too. Cleo, which bills itself as 'the world's first AI financial assistant,' got a big update that uses OpenAI's sophisticated o3 reasoning model to help users break down complex financial decisions. The app also now has the ability to remember your financial history and goals. You can even talk to the app with a new two-way voice feature. At some point, Cleo might ask you if you want to take out a loan. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. I'd been using the previous version of Cleo for a few weeks without any big breakthroughs. But when I linked my bank accounts (securely!) to Cleo 3.0, the latest version of the artificially intelligent financial assistant, I was stunned by how handy it was to ask detailed questions about my spending habits, savings goals, and retirement planning in plain English and get useful answers. The app is built on top of ChatGPT and is specifically trained to handle those kinds of questions. It's also equipped with tools to do the math correctly. In the past, only the very wealthy have been able to map out their financial futures like this. In the very near future, anyone could do it for free. There's something revolutionary about this concept. And that's not just Cleo's executives talking. A number of experts have told me that tools built on top of large language models like ChatGPT stand to transform the world of financial advice and planning. They have the ability to ingest vast amounts of your financial data, they're trained on the same materials a human financial planner might use, and they can answer an endless number of questions based on that knowledge and expertise. In the past, only the very wealthy have been able to map out their financial futures like this. In the very near future, anyone could do it for free. 'We're on the cusp of a pretty significant change in how [people] are able to use AI to help manage their finances,' said Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. 'I don't think these apps are all ready for primetime, but nonetheless, there is a sea change between today's AI finance applications and what existed even two years ago.' Such a sea change comes with its own challenges. The arithmetic issue is one of them, although there are ways to build these apps in order to curb hallucinations. Another is ensuring the right guidance is tailored to the right user — what's called 'suitability' in the finance world. But, Lo explained, 'probably the most important and most difficult challenge is trust and ethics.' How do you ensure an AI fulfills its fiduciary duty to give you the best advice? Licensed financial advisers, who work in a highly regulated industry, can face civil or even criminal charges for failing their clients. An AI currently cannot. That means you definitely should not let an app talk you into pouring your retirement savings into meme stocks. But you might consider letting a chatbot take a peek at what you're spending on streaming services. Did you know, for instance, that canceling Apple TV+ and putting that $10 a month into an IRA could add up to over $12,000 saved in 30 years? That's a fact I learned from Cleo. The artificial lightness of banking My first brush with algorithmic financial advice was a decade ago, when I downloaded an app called Digit. The proposition was simple: You connect your bank account to Digit, which would analyze your spending and strategically slide a few dollars or cents into a savings account. I ended up saving thousands of dollars using Digit without really noticing, which was precisely the point. There's a lightness to the Digit experience. Contrast that with Mint, the now-defunct app and website that let you connect to your bank accounts and used machine learning to categorize your spending. Mint was heavy, because it required a lot of time to set up; you had to make sure all the automation was working correctly and then had to keep the settings updated as your financial situation changed. An array of finance and budgeting apps have swept in to replace Mint after its 2024 closure: YNAB, Monarch Money, Origin, to name a few. They're heavy, too, although they're increasingly incorporating AI to make things run more smoothly. Most of these apps use a service called Plaid in order to keep your financial data secure. Plaid, which is used by companies like Venmo, Robinhood, and Chime, gives the apps real-time, read-only access to your accounts so the apps never have direct access to your money. There's always the risk of a data breach, which is not unheard of in the fintech world. While Plaid has made it easier for apps to see all your balances and transactions, what people actually need from a fintech app varies widely. 'If the product can help you make a complex financial decision confidently and competently in minutes, instead of hours with a bunch of pain and stress and mental suffering, more people will use it.' — Ethan Bloch, Digit founder 'Personal finance is incredibly niche, because each person, on a set of dimensions, is a unique snowflake financially,' Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, told me. Bloch sold Digit to the financial technology, or fintech, company Oportun in 2021 and is currently working on a new AI-powered financial tool called Hiro, which promises to 'turn your financial data into personalized advice' through a chatbot. Bloch said that large language models have made this possible and that, like Digit, the experience can be incredibly light and feel effortless. 'If the product can help you make a complex financial decision confidently and competently in minutes, instead of hours with a bunch of pain and stress and mental suffering, more people will use it,' he said. Of course, this is assuming the AI never gets anything wrong. AI at your own risk Fintech apps are not banks — which means that even though they might handle your money or your financial data, an app like Cleo is not as heavily regulated as a chartered bank, like Chase or Bank of America. Fintech apps might require licenses to take part in certain activities, like moving money between accounts or holding balances. If an app gives investment advice, it might face scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or state regulators. For the most part, though, there is no regulatory oversight when it comes to financial coaching, which is what Cleo does. Making sure AI-powered fintech apps don't dupe Americans was a job for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but it's unclear how much power the agency has under the Trump administration. For example, the CFPB passed a rule last year that established a set of personal financial data rights around what happens when you connect your bank account to an app like Cleo, YNAB, or Monarch Money. That rule is now being rewritten under the Trump administration, as congressional Republicans attempt to defund the CFPB altogether. Related The perils of using payment apps as your bank account 'The vision that came out of the financial crisis was that we would have a strong regulator putting consumers first, because for too long, the regulators had put banks first,' said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at Brookings, 'and that vision has been destroyed by the Trump administration.' It almost goes without saying these days that generative AI is a new technology, and the apps using large language models for financial advice are even newer. There is not a lot of oversight of this space — there's not none — but you should be careful when entrusting your financial fate to a chatbot. The proposition is still intriguing. We've already seen AI chatbots streamline the tax-filing process, and it's increasingly clear that AI can make you better at your job, as long as it's not stealing it. It seems very possible that in the near future, AI will make it easier to make a budget and stick to it. It might help you plan better for your retirement. I am not yet asking an AI chatbot for investment advice — there is just too much downside when it comes to sensitive decisions involving large sums of money. But talking through ideas for how I might get more out of my money and then fact-checking everything the bot tells me? That makes sense. At the end of the day, I still want to talk to living, breathing experts about my big financial decisions. But for the smaller stuff, this technology could help a lot of people. It could democratize financial advice, in a sense. 'On the bright side, I think that a large number of individuals, who are currently not getting any financial advice and badly need it — they will have access to pretty good financial advice at no cost,' said Lo, the MIT professor. 'That's the promise of AI over the course of the next few months, not to mention years.'
Vox
17-07-2025
- Vox
Revenge of the flip phone
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Despite rumors of its demise, the smartphone will continue to be your most important gadget for a long while. Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images I laughed out loud the first time I saw a folding phone. The contraptions, which debuted when the Samsung Galaxy Fold hit the market in 2019, are smartphones with bendable screens. You can fold them in half and put them in your pocket. That first Galaxy Fold was huge, heavy, cost nearly $2,000, and looked like it would snap in half the first time you used it. When folded, the tiny display on the front was not enough screen. When unfolded, the device became a creased tablet and too much screen. But after spending a few days with the latest iteration of that very gadget, which Samsung announced last week, I think the future of smartphones is more interesting than we thought. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. We've all been beholden to smartphones for more than a decade. Although they're wonderfully capable pocket computers, smartphones are also a source of work stress and a place for doomscrolling, all wrapped up in a piece of hardware that hasn't evolved in a meaningful way in years. The new iPhone that will debut later this year, for example, will undoubtedly look and work a lot like last year's iPhone. This lack of innovation is why people have been saying for about a decade that the smartphone era has run its course. Soon, they say, we'll be wearing augmented reality glasses instead, or AI pins that we talk to. Despite rumors of its demise — including those coming from AI maximalists like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg — the smartphone will continue to be your most important gadget for a long while. That doesn't mean you'll continue to carry around the same boring slab of glass you've had in your pocket since the late 2000s. Foldables, an unfortunately named category of devices with shape-shifting abilities, are finally becoming an appealing alternative. In a lot of ways, it feels like the comeback of a much older device: the flip phone. Samsung just released the $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold 7, which is effectively the same size and thickness as my iPhone 15 Pro but opens up to reveal an 8-inch screen (about the size of an iPad Mini). The company also released the $1,100 Flip 7, which is 4.1 inches of screen folded up but becomes a full-sized smartphone when unfolded. Motorola has a similarly futuristic flip phone, the Razr Ultra, and Oppo has a comparable folding phone, the Find N5. Things get even more mind-bending in China, where Huawei sells the Mate XT, a phone that folds twice. Dubbed a 'trifold,' this form factor is basically a tablet that folds up like a brochure. Even Apple is reportedly working on a folding iPhone. 'If and when Apple enters this segment, they will create a lot of awareness,' said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at IDC. 'It will help the entire industry to move towards [foldables].' Folding phones are supposed to adapt to your needs: Start with the smaller screen for basic tasks, like checking notifications, and then switch to the bigger screens for writing emails and watching videos. As someone who dreads reading anything long on a small screen, I get the appeal. I really like the idea of making the device smaller, as the Samsung Flip and Motorola Razr do, to give me less screen to stare at for basic functions. It also makes me nostalgic for a time when these devices didn't fill up your entire pocket — or your attention span. Related How switching to a flip phone deepened my friendships More than anything, the idea that smartphones still have a few tricks up their sleeves brings me hope that, even if people like Altman and Zuckerberg really want us to, we won't all be wearing AI pins or smart glasses any time soon. 'Is the smartphone going to be replaced? I think at some point, yeah,' Gerrit Schneemann, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told me. 'But I think it's going to take a long time for that to shift, so not in the next five years.' The hunt for an iPhone successor There was a time when people were obsessed with their phones, and these devices were a source of wonderment and fun. (This was well before we knew how phones were cooking our brains.) Companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung got into an arms race over how many cameras they could cram onto a device or how high the screen resolution could go. By the late 2010s, however, the specs had more or less maxed out. Even cheap phones were really good. So people held onto their phones for longer, breaking the annual upgrade cycle. Devicemakers started inventing reasons to upgrade, like the introduction of 5G wireless technology, which was really important to carriers but didn't impact consumers all that much. More recently, there's been a similar push to upgrade your phone to take advantage of AI features, even when the ChatGPT app works just fine on most phones. Apple ended up getting sued several times over how it marketed its Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones. Whatever the future of the smartphone is, standalone AI devices have not done well so far. In 2024, the Humane Pin, a $700 AI-powered device that clipped to your shirt and projected text messages onto your hand, became one of the biggest flops in gadget history, lasting less than a year on the market. The Rabbit R1, a smartphone-adjacent little box that promised to be a personal assistant, also got awful reviews last year. Even the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which I've spent hours testing, currently struggle as a smartphone replacement (Meta has admitted as much). You can talk to the AI assistant, but you have to take out your phone to get anything done. Related Your iPhone is about to get uglier 'I'm not sure why they've decided voice is a good input method, but I'm not totally certain users are actually ever going to be comfortable doing that,' said Max Weinbach, an analyst at Creative Strategies. That brings us back to the familiar glow of a smartphone screen. Love it or hate it, this will continue to be your portal into the digital world for years to come — but probably not forever. Meta, Apple, and Google are all working on their versions of augmented or mixed reality devices. In addition to the Ray-Ban glasses, Meta revealed the Orion glasses last fall, which project virtual elements onto the real world and make you look goofy in the process. Apple is expected to release the second-generation Vision Pro headset, a very expensive set of goggles that also mix the real and virtual worlds, later this year on the way to its own lightweight glasses. Both devices currently require you to keep a smartphone-sized component in your pocket for the glasses to work. So we're a ways away from a total smartphone replacement. Foldables, in the meantime, create a sort of bridge. If your hope is to spend less time staring at screens, a new-fangled flip phone like the Samsung Flip or the Motorola Razr is a good compromise, since the small screen ostensibly keeps you from looking at the big screen too much. If you want to be more immersed in your daily content, a device like the Galaxy Fold makes certain sense in the absence of a true augmented reality experience that turns the real world digital. If you really just want more control over your screen time and you're not enthralled by the idea of talking to an AI all day or dealing with anything foldable, I have to recommend the Light Phone 3. This compact device for digital minimalists is effectively a smartphone that's been stripped of the most addictive features. I like to think of it as a weekend phone that lets you put your smartphone life on hold for an extended period of time. On the Light Phone, there is no app store, and thus, no TikTok or any other endless feeds. There are simply tools like maps, a music player, a messaging feature, and of course, a phone. As Kaiwei Tang, co-creator of the Light Phone, told me earlier this year, 'We don't want the device to try to fight for your attention, or be shiny. We wanted it to be calm, low key, and just disappear, even when you use it.' I've tried out all of these form factors, because I'm a nerd and because it's my job. As appealing as they are, I won't be switching to either of Samsung's foldable options permanently, because I am stuck in the Apple ecosystem and basically satisfied. I tried switching to the Light Phone, but as a young parent, I'm too dependent on being constantly connected — for better or worse. I also have a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses that I primarily use as sunglasses that can also play podcasts. You could say that I'm stuck somewhere between the future and the past. As eager as I am for something new to come along and unify my digital life, as the smartphone did so many years ago, I find myself reaching for different devices for specific purposes. But I'm also nostalgic for the time when each gadget had its purpose, when a flip phone was what I used to make calls and an iPod was how I listened to music. My smartphone can do it all, sure, and it will for years to come.
Edmonton Journal
12-07-2025
- Health
- Edmonton Journal
Keenan: Is RFK Jr. 'bonkers' or is it time for a wearable?
Are the good ones really accurate? You'd certainly expect a smartwatch to count your steps properly since that problem was solved in 1780. What about more subtle parameters like peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (Sp02 )? This is what they measure in a hospital or doctor's office by putting a device similar to a clothespin on your finger. A drop can indicate circulatory or breathing problems. It can also help detect sleep apnea, a condition where breathing stops for 10 seconds or more. Article content A study published in Digital Health in 2022 found that 'Apple Watch Series 6 can reliably detect states of reduced blood oxygen saturation with SpO2 below 90 per cent when compared to a medical-grade pulse oximeter.' Article content Smartwatches vary in what other medical parameters they can measure. The higher-end models feature electrocardiogram functionality, and this capability is improving as artificial intelligence is integrated. Several studies show that they can play a role in detecting serious conditions, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib). A recent article by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine concluded that 'AI-enhanced wearable and portable devices represent a transformative force in cardiovascular care by enabling efficient, equitable, and accessible care directly in the communities.' Article content Article content Closer to home, a beloved University of Calgary professor had some cardiac problems. His class passed the hat to buy him an end-of-term gift. It was a large class, so they were able to get him an Apple Watch, which he still wears. Article content Sleep tracking was a major appeal of a smartwatch for me. Mine produces a daily sleep score, which can range from 0 to 100. I made it to 79 last night, which pleased me greatly. The manufacturer's website, explains the calculation, saying 'It includes how much time you spent in, and the patterns formed between, the light, deep and REM sleep stages. Experts say these affect your mental and physical recovery. Deep sleep, for example, helps with muscle recovery.' Article content Critics of health trackers note that some people become obsessed with their numbers in an unhealthy manner. Also, we may be sending intimate information to a company that might not respect our privacy. At the very least, I recommend using a newly created email address that's not linked to your name when you sign up for a fitness tracking website. Article content If you need another reason, consider my all-time favourite headline from Gizmodo, 'Your fuelband knows when you're having sex.' As author Adam Clark Estes wrote back in 2013, 'How else do you explain getting a half hour of exercise late at night without taking a single step?'
Calgary Herald
12-07-2025
- Health
- Calgary Herald
Keenan: Is RFK Jr. 'bonkers' or is it time for a wearable?
Are the good ones really accurate? You'd certainly expect a smartwatch to count your steps properly since that problem was solved in 1780. What about more subtle parameters like peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (Sp02 )? This is what they measure in a hospital or doctor's office by putting a device similar to a clothespin on your finger. A drop can indicate circulatory or breathing problems. It can also help detect sleep apnea, a condition where breathing stops for 10 seconds or more. Article content A study published in Digital Health in 2022 found that 'Apple Watch Series 6 can reliably detect states of reduced blood oxygen saturation with SpO2 below 90 per cent when compared to a medical-grade pulse oximeter.' Article content Smartwatches vary in what other medical parameters they can measure. The higher-end models feature electrocardiogram functionality, and this capability is improving as artificial intelligence is integrated. Several studies show that they can play a role in detecting serious conditions, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib). A recent article by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine concluded that 'AI-enhanced wearable and portable devices represent a transformative force in cardiovascular care by enabling efficient, equitable, and accessible care directly in the communities.' Article content Article content Closer to home, a beloved University of Calgary professor had some cardiac problems. His class passed the hat to buy him an end-of-term gift. It was a large class, so they were able to get him an Apple Watch, which he still wears. Article content Sleep tracking was a major appeal of a smartwatch for me. Mine produces a daily sleep score, which can range from 0 to 100. I made it to 79 last night, which pleased me greatly. The manufacturer's website, explains the calculation, saying 'It includes how much time you spent in, and the patterns formed between, the light, deep and REM sleep stages. Experts say these affect your mental and physical recovery. Deep sleep, for example, helps with muscle recovery.' Article content Critics of health trackers note that some people become obsessed with their numbers in an unhealthy manner. Also, we may be sending intimate information to a company that might not respect our privacy. At the very least, I recommend using a newly created email address that's not linked to your name when you sign up for a fitness tracking website. Article content If you need another reason, consider my all-time favourite headline from Gizmodo, 'Your fuelband knows when you're having sex.' As author Adam Clark Estes wrote back in 2013, 'How else do you explain getting a half hour of exercise late at night without taking a single step?'
Vox
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Little videos are cooking our brains
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Before the next era of TikTok and its clones overwhelms you, it helps to know how we got here and how to run the other direction. Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images As an elder millennial, I've tried to avoid TikTok because of its documented brainrot potential and despite the fact that it means missing out on an endless supply of fun and strangely specific memes. But somehow, little short-form vertical videos keep finding their way to me. Whether they're on Instagram, Netflix, or Pinterest, swipeable smartphone-shaped videos have taken over the internet. They're also showing up in places you wouldn't expect, like Spotify, LinkedIn, and even the New York Times. And whether you enjoy these bite-size bits of content or not, the situation is about to get much weirder. The dark future of vertical video In the near future, the internet may not only be wall-to-wall little videos. Those little videos may also be filled with slop, the term for AI-generated garbage content that is perhaps even more insidious in robbing us of our attention. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Last week, Google started rolling out its Veo 3 AI-powered video generation model, which can create eight-second clips, complete with realistic soundtracks, based on text prompts. After creating a dozen videos of her own, including some for kids, Allison Johnson at the Verge called this tool 'a slop monger's dream' that's 'more than a little creepy and way more sophisticated' than she'd imagined. String together a few of these clips, and you've got a piece of short-form content perfect for TikTok or any of its antecedents that took mere minutes to create. YouTube announced last month that the tool would be built right into its own TikTok clone, YouTube Shorts. These videos are already taking over short-form video platforms. Some of them are racist. AI slop may soon also dominate the ads you're served on these platforms, too. These ads, while currently laughable, will get much better, according to Mark Zuckerberg, who says Meta will completely automate the creation of ads and even make it possible for ads to exist in infinite versions and evolve based on when and where a person sees them. And as algorithmic feeds of short-form videos spread to more places online, it will be increasingly hard to avoid them. We've known for a while that the rise of AI would flood the internet with slop. Slop is already remarkably popular on YouTube, where nearly half of the 10 most popular channels contain AI-generated content. There are even virtual personalities powered by AI earning millions on YouTube. These platforms know that making content easier to produce will lead to more content, which leads to more engagement, which leads to more ads, which ultimately leads to a less enriching, more addictive internet. That's why YouTube is pushing Veo 3 to its creators, and why, as of last month, TikTok and Open AI have pushed out similar tools. This wouldn't be such a concern if you wanted to seek out awful AI-generated videos. Instead, the slop finds you unwittingly and drowns you in anxiety. These platforms know that making content easier to produce will lead to more content, which leads to more engagement, which leads to more ads, which ultimately leads to a less enriching, more addictive internet. 'You can think of it as attentional capacity, and we can use that capacity to get work done, to do important things,' said Gloria Mark, author of Attention Span and professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, whose research landed on that 47-second number. 'But if we're switching our attention, that's draining our tank of resources, and then we just don't have the capacity anymore to pay attention.' Before the next era of TikTok and its clones overwhelms you, it helps to know how we got here and how to run the other direction. Can you opt out of the endless-loop internet? There's a popular narrative that TikTok owes its success to Vine, a short-form video service founded in 2012 only to be bought by Twitter a few months later. It's a nice thought. Vine, like Twitter itself, was accidentally successful. While many young people first encountered a feed for weird and hilarious short-form videos on Vine, it was the TikTok algorithm that led to that platform's success, not to mention the long line of companies trying to draft off that success. That algorithm finds its roots in a viral news app called Toutiao, which ByteDance released in China the same year that Vine launched in the US. (Yes, this is the same ByteDance that now owns TikTok.) The platform's big innovation was a complex recommendation engine that used machine learning, a type of AI, to create a highly personalized feed for its users based on their interests and behavior — down to their swipes, location, and even their phone's battery life — rather than what people you know are doing online. The algorithm proved extremely effective at getting people to spend more time on the app. ByteDance made this algorithm the foundation of TikTok's video feed, when it launched in 2017 (a version of the app, Douyin, launched in China two years earlier). If you find yourself stuck Try these three tips from professor Gloria Mark: Take breaks. If, rather than enjoying yourself, you find yourself foraging for interesting content, stand up and go outside and look at a tree. There are . If, rather than enjoying yourself, you find yourself foraging for interesting content, stand up and go outside and look at a tree. There are lots of apps that prompt you to put down the device. Be intentional rather than automatic when you use any app. If you tap TikTok because you don't know what else to do, that's a sign that you're tired and low on cognitive resources. Think ahead to your future self. Visualize what you want at the end of your day and how you'll get there. It probably doesn't involve spending 108 minutes looking at TikTok. Early on, a one-minute length limit meant that TikTok users were fed videos constantly, often serendipitously, on their For You page. That limit has since been extended to 60 minutes, but users have also learned they can swipe to see a new, unexpected video as soon as they're bored. This can lead users to keep searching for good videos, which are effectively rewards, triggering dopamine release and effectively getting them addicted to the feedback loop. As Mark put it, 'The hardest behavior to extinguish, to stop, is randomly reinforced behavior, and the reason is because of the randomness of the rewards coming.' The short-form nature of these videos, rapid context-switching, and resultant digital overload has multiple negative effects. A 2023 study from researchers in Germany found that TikTok use impairs our prospective memory, which is what allows you to hold more than one thought in your head when you're distracted. The subjects of the study were given a task, then interrupted and allowed to scroll Twitter, watch YouTube, thumb through TikTok, or do nothing. The people who chose TikTok were nearly 40 percent more likely to forget what they were doing. Researchers studying this phenomenon argue that this amounts to a dark pattern, a design that manipulates you to make certain choices. You've encountered dark patterns on websites that trick you into signing up for a newsletter or an ad you can't click out of. Torrents of short-form videos like you see on TikTok are especially pernicious because the feeds are designed to keep you fully engaged and foraging for good content. 'They keep us in an endless loop. We kind of detach from the things that we were engaged with before,' Francesco Chiossi, a researcher at LMU Munich and the study's lead author, told me. 'They are engineered to maximize engagement at the expense of our attention and stability of what we call goal-directed behavior.' It would be comforting for me to report that you can easily avoid getting stuck in these loops. It's actually getting harder. You can avoid TikTok, but you might love Netflix, which is rolling out its own TikTok-like video feed on its mobile app. I use Spotify daily, sometimes against my better judgment, but the discovery feature keeps pushing me to watch little video clips rather than simply listen to music. On the LinkedIn video tab, its TikTok clone, a work influencer recently warned me against 'peanut-buttering every channel instead of going deep on a few channels.' I spent at least 47 seconds trying to figure out what that meant. There's a pretty straightforward lesson here, though. If you like to watch these little videos, by all means: Enjoy. But know that, like most free things big tech companies make today, these products are designed to keep you engaged, to steal as much of your attention as possible as they collect data about you and serve ads to you based on what that data reveals. TikTok and its many little siblings are free because you're the product. Consider taking some of the minutes — or hours — back from TikTok and its many little video clones. You might discover something wonderful in the real world, if you pay attention.
