Mobile apps can be great fun, but they can also cumulatively take up a lot of your time and distract you from work. Youll need more than just willpower to properly control your appetite for apps you need to understand how they work, and why theyre extremely addictive.

Photo by Mo Riza, Wonderlane, XKCD and m01229

Apps are awesome. Many apps entertain you while killing the idle five-minute segments in your day. Some apps actually help you stay in touch with friends and family that youd otherwise have lost contact with. Theres a reason so many great businesses and experiences have been built on mobile apps. But as a reader told author Nir Eyal, If it cant be used for evil, its not a super power.

There is a darker side to apps that a lot of us arent aware of. For example, we spend way more time on them that we think. As information research firm Nielsen reports, we now spend 65% more time each month using apps than we did just a couple of years ago. By the end of 2013, on average, we spent 30 hours and 15 minutes per month using apps. Thats almost two full days of being awake.

If you need further convincing were becoming addicted to our apps and phones, venture capitalist and mobile analyst Mary Meeker reports that on average we check our phones 150 times every day in her May 2013 Internet Trends Report.

Mobile analytics company Flurry defines a mobile addict as someone who launches apps more than 60 times per day. Based on their data from 500,000 apps across 1.3 billion devices, they saw the number of mobile addicts users grow 123% between 2013 and 2014. In March of 2014, there were 176 million mobile addicts, up from 79 million in March of 2013.

Where manufacturers of earlier technology also wanted to make their products more engaging, they didnt have the data or algorithms to the extent app makers do today. Developers can track every single interaction you have with the app, and use that data to make their products more addictive. And they will people who make apps literally use addiction as a success metric.

The solution isnt to throw apps out the window. Theyre extremely convenient and they bring great benefit and joy to our lives. Theyre also only going to more and more useful. Youd probably rather live in a world with apps than one without them. Much like how youd be cautious around substances like alcohol, which can be potentially addictive, you can enjoy it in healthy, controlled, amounts.

Apps arent passive (by default). They constantly reach out to you through your inboxes and push notifications. These notifications require a human element to overcome. Heres how apps are designed to be addictive, how you can take back control of your time and energy, and how you can live happily with apps:

You may have an almost Pavlov-like reaction to the sound of a text message, a push notification, or a phone vibration in your pocket. App developers and marketers specifically design these hooks to draw your attention back to your mobile device.

Continue reading here:

The Tricks Apps Play On Your Mind To Keep You Hooked