March 23, 2026 • 32 mins
Why is social media so hard to quit? We waste hours scrolling, feel worse when we log off, and still find ourselves going back for more.
Dr. Laurie sits down with Dr. Cass Sunstein, co-author of (00:00:57) Nudge, to explore a new concept from the 2026 World Happiness Report: the “product trap.” Together, they unpack why we keep returning to platforms that make us unhappy — and what it might take to finally break free.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
“The Welfare Effects of Social Media”
“When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media”
“Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron”
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. The late American author and media critic Neil Postman
once famously wrote, technological change is not additive, it is ecological.
A new technology does not merely add something, it changes everything.
Postman made this observation all the way back in nineteen
(00:37):
ninety two, over a decade before smartphones and over a
decade before the launch of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
and TikTok. Postman's quote feels particularly relevant today, especially given
what researchers around the world are learning about the negative
effects of these technologies. Researchers like today's guest.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm CAAs Sunstein. I teach at Harvard. I work on
law and behavioral science. I've been working for about seven
years on social media and happiness and the divergence between
what people choose and what actually makes their lives better.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
You might know Cast from his influential book Nudge, which
he co authored with the Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Taylor.
Nudge explores how small changes in our environments can influence
the choices we make. Or you may know Casts from
his work in the Obama administration, where he helped bring
behavioral science into public policy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I had the Office of Information at Regulatory Affairs, analyzing
the effects of regulations to make sure that the benefits
are higher than the costs.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Cass is one of the scholars in behavioral science that
I really look up to. He's also one of the
most prolific academics I've ever met. I've lost count of
the number of books he's written. I think it's well
over fifty at this point, and that doesn't even include
the hundreds of academic articles he's authored, most of which
are about some strange or unexpected aspect of human behavior.
(02:01):
And this year, Cass adds to that long list as
one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, an
annual academic publication about the state of global well being.
Each year the World Happiness Report centers on a different theme.
The twenty twenty six report is all about how technology
affects human happiness, and in true cast Sunstein fashion, his
(02:21):
chapter in this year's report introduces an important new concept,
one that I find super helpful for making sense of
all the irrational ways we get stuck online and behaviors
that tend to decrease our health and our happiness.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
People are thinking given the fact that there is this
platform and my people are on it. I'm going to
stay on and I'm going to get off at kicking
and screaming. But do I like this status quo? I
do not like the status quo at all.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So if you're feeling trapped by your relationship with technology
and social media, stay tuned because casp will share this
exciting new concept from his chapter why this new concept
is so important and what understanding it means for escaping
the trap of social media platforms. All that when the
Happiness Lab returns right after some quick ads from our sponsors.
(03:20):
Behavioral scientist and legal scholar cast Sunstein spends a lot
of time thinking about ways that we can shape our
behavior to feel happier and healthier, and he's particularly interested
in cases in which people behave in ways that decrease
what economists call their utility. Since I'm guessing that many
of my listeners aren't trained economists, I asked Kass for
a quick definition of utility.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well, it basically means well being.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
So if you have a day where you're really enjoying
it and maybe life is very meaningful, and you think
at the end that was such a great day that
had a lot of utility if.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You had a day where you were in pain or
struggling or sad or scared or worried or depressed, that
would be a low utility day. So to think of
utility as pretty close to synonymous with well being is
fundamental right.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Economists tend to assume that people are rational, that is,
they should consistently behave in ways that maximize their utility.
But of course we do irrational stuff all the time, like,
for example, spending hour after hours scrolling on Instagram or
TikTok when that behavior makes us feel unproductive and pretty gross.
So why on earth do you so called rational creatures
(04:30):
like us waste so much time on platforms that don't
even feel good. That was what Casts set out to
explain in his chapter in this year's World Happiness Report,
and his explanation involves recognizing something new that social media
isn't just a typical kind of product. Instead, it falls
into the category of what Cast calls a product trap.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
A product trap is something where people buy it because
there's some negative thing that happens if they're not the
one who's buying it. So people sometimes buy goods whose
existence they deplore. That phenomenon is I think keenly interesting
and pervasive goods that people consume but they wish they
weren't around, And social media has that form. So people
(05:14):
are trapped. They are kind of forced, so to speak,
into a situation where they're on social media, even though
they would be happier if social media didn't exist.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
To better understand this idea of a product trap, let's
turn to the way that the usual sorts of products,
the non trappy kind, tend to affect utility. Let's say
I decide to buy a new blender. There are lots
of things about my new blender that might affect how
much I like it, things like how well it blends
through big chunks of ice, or how easy it is
to clean. All stuff related to how well that blender
(05:47):
works in my own kitchen. But one thing that won't
affect my utility is whether or not lots of other
people have bought the same blender. But for a small
subset of products, it matters whether other people buy the
same thing, either because keeping up with the joneses is
the main point of buying that product in the first place,
think luxury watches are designer handbags, or because the products
(06:08):
themselves get better simply because more people are using them.
Think social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Products like
these are what CAST calls product traps.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And the trap is that the company is able to
maneuver you into a situation in which you get the
thing because you would incur some sort of social cost
if you weren't engage.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
So that's a product trap. And now that you have
a word for this concept, I bet you're going to
start noticing product traps everywhere. This is a vocabulary term
that I introduce in my Yeale Happiness class, and it
is the one that they yell students resonate with the most.
They are just like, I'm so happy that there is
a word for this thing that I have been into
for a long time because I think that so many
(06:52):
of the goods that they're supposed to get in life
wind up being product traps or just the things that
they use. All the time, students brought up filters on
the photos that they use. They know it makes them
look kind of weird and that it's not great for
our body image that we're all using them, but they
don't want to be the one person who's not filtering
their photos. Bill in Middle age like me, w'd be
things like botox or you know, supplements or these things
(07:13):
where it's like I just wish the world didn't have
these things, but in fact, given to the world does
have them, I feel like I have to use them too.
And when I was talking with my production team, they
brought up Elf on a Shelf, which is a holiday
example of this, where it's like, if the kid down
the hall is their parents are doing Elf on the shelf,
you feel like you have to do it too, but
it just kind of makes you miserable.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I'll give you two examples, if I may. My sister
decided one Christmas that the adults would not give each
other presents anymore. The presence would only go to children.
And everyone thought that was an extremely great thing because
for years we've been giving each other presence where there
was no benefit, mostly because people would struggle to find
(07:54):
something people would like and people didn't really need another
tie or whatever. Another example is, you know, I go
to Ireland because my wife is Irish and I drink
a little bit of alcohol, even though I don't drink
alcohol anywhere but Ireland, and the reason is among my
(08:15):
beloved Irish relatives, I say sorry, I'm not drinking. The
reaction is maybe he's an alcoholic, or maybe he's very
negative about drinkers and the non alcoholic. I'm not negative
about drinkers, but I give that kind of signal to
some Irish relatives. And the idea is that this is
(08:36):
a pervasive thing.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Right, It's not just about the other people using these products.
It's about what happens to you if you're the one
person who chooses not to use this product. And this
is what you've called a consumption spillover or a negative
non user externality. Walk me through how that works.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The non user externality. That's a little fussier turn that
we're using, where if you're not using the thing, you suffer.
So let's suppose there's a party on a Monday night.
Everyone's going, and people might think I'm certainly going to
go to the party, because if I don't go, I'll
be giving a signal to people that I don't like parties,
(09:13):
that I don't like the hosts, that I'm an antisocial person,
that I'm a workaholic, or that I really like this
show on Netflix. So not going imposes a cost on you,
and the cost might be you know, self perception, or
you might think that the other people are going to
saying what's wrong with that guy? But it might be
there are some social events that you go to because
(09:33):
you kind of have to, but if they were canceled,
you'd think life is a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And a lot of these product traps where the consumptions
fill over occurs is because of a specific emotion, which
is this emotion of fomo. Right. This is what my
Yale students talk about and why I think these product
traps are so powerful and college students is like it's
literally affecting your sense of belonging.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So there's a connection between the product trap phenomenon the
behavioral phenomenon of loss aversion. People dislike losses that tend
to anticipate at least disliking losses about twice as much
as they like equivalent gains. If you think that I'm
going to miss out, let's say on a Instagram something
(10:14):
or on a TikTok something that's a loss, and loss
makes people feel very nervous. It's a distinctive kind of
fear of missing out, which is accompanied by a thought
that the thing that you're missing out from you wish
weren't occurring, and the fact that people get trapped in
this because of social norms or because of agile let's say,
(10:36):
company behavior, that's really concerning it might be that anyone
can entrap almost anyone by triggering fear of missing out.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
One of the domains of my students instantly saw that
they're dealing with a product trap. Interestingly was with AI
and specifically the use of AI to do their schoolwork,
the cheap bought use of AI, as they call it,
because I think all of them want to learn the
material and do the essay on their own and get
the sense of purpose that comes from that. But if
they know that everyone in the class is you using LLM,
(11:10):
they feel like, well, I'm a chump. If I'm putting
my time into this, I should just use these same
cheapbot tools that everyone else is. It seems like many
of them aren't using it because of their own individual
benefit of cheating. Many of them just kind of hated
the idea that everybody else is using it, but they
feel like, well, now I got to use it too.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's a great example. So AI for many students is
a product trap where you wish it didn't exist, but
contingent on its existence, you have to use it. That's
a different mechanism kind of from fear of missing out.
It's that you would be performing less well.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So product traps are bad for the people who get
trapped using these products. But what about for the companies
that make these products. It kind of seems like a
good deal for them.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh yeah, it's fantastic. So in business schools, this relatively
new stuff should be taught as a technique for attracting customers.
So if you're trying to sell a product to say
that you don't want to be one of the few
who and have it, that can be very effective, especially
(12:13):
if it is visible. So if you're visibly not someone
who's using let's say a social media platform that everyone
in your group is using, that triggers something in the
human brain. And if there's some product that's visible, it
might be that the exclusion and the cost that is
imposed by people who aren't included is the principal determinant
(12:35):
of consumption behavior. So we know that a company would
do very well in a very cheerful way to emphasize
the wonderfulness of being part of a large community of
people who are increasingly visibly buying or engaged in this.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It also seems like companies are doing everything in their
power to do this more and more. You can't just
have a like internet game as to be an Internet
game where you share your stats with other people. You're
always constantly showing off whether or not you're using the product,
which of course contributes to the product happiness of some
of these goods.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, if you don't post your number, you are giving
a signal of some maybe embarrassing sort that you're not participating,
that you're not good at the thing, that you're not playful.
And all of these things can be profoundly motivating, and
they can be exploited in a way that makes people
(13:29):
worse off.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
So now you know what a product trap is. And
I got to admit it kind of looks like social
media platforms qualify, but not so fast because casts and
other behavioral scientists have a strict empirical test for determining
whether a product truly counts as a product trap, one
that involves a curiously irrational thing that we tend to
do with our money. We'll hear all about that curious
(13:51):
monetary behavior right after this quick break. Like many behavioral
economists Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein, there's a lot of
time thinking about how people spend their money, and more specifically,
(14:13):
how much people are willing to pay for different products.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Suppose the question is would you benefit from having a
book or a dinner? How do we know? Well, we
can ask commuch you're willing to pay for it. It's
kind of the best measure we have. So if people
are willing to pay let's say fifteen dollars for a
book and not fifty, then we have some clue of
what the book is worth to them in terms of
(14:37):
well being. So willingness to pay is the best real
world measure we have off hand of what makes people
better off.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Economists also have lots of theories about how a rational
actor's willingness to pay should work. For example, the idea
that people will have some dollar amount in their heads
that represents a product's utility, how much it's worth to you.
So if someone is willing to pay fifty bucks for
say a blender, that dollar amount should be about the
same if you're thinking about buying the product or selling it.
(15:07):
But blenders and books are readler, non trappy kinds of products.
Ones that aren't affected all that much by whether other
people are buying the same product. Cas was interested in
whether social media platforms work differently than books and blenders,
and whether they qualified as product traps.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So I asked people how much you're willing to pay
for a month of social media platforms? And then I
asked a different population, how much money would you demand
to be off a platform for a month. So the
setup is people are asked how much would you pay
to use YouTube, or pay to use Facebook, or pay
to use Twitter, or how much would you demand to
(15:46):
be off? And there's a Nobel Prize winning theorem that
says the number has to be the same that if
people are willing to pay let's say six dollars for
movie ticket, they would demand six dollars to give up
the movie ticket value is value. And I was testing
whether this idea would be reflected in people's valuation of
(16:08):
social media platforms. But I got a staggering result. A
substantial number of people said I'll pay nothing to use
social media platforms, and the average answer was pretty low,
like five or ten dollars. So people are saying nothing,
or they're saying kind of a pittance to use social
media platforms and then to give up use. I got
(16:29):
a really big number, like people wanted like one hundred
dollars on average. So the disparity between how much people
would demand to give up use and how much people
are willing to pay to use Facebook is twenty to one.
There's a Nobel Prize winning theorem that says it has
to be one to one.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It was really surprising to me when you showed that
people are just not willing to pay anything to be
on social media, because if you look at just time use,
you might have predicted something very different. Right our young
people today, my Yale College students are on average in
some studies using these platforms for like four hours a day,
up to eight hours a day. But you ask them,
how much is it worth to you if you have
to pay money for and people are like nothing, I
(17:09):
would never pay to go on this stuff. What does
that tell you?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
So there are a couple different possibilities. One is people
are anchoring on the current price, which is zero. So
if the current price is zero and they asked how
much will you pay, they'll say zero, or they'll maybe
adjust a little bit up from zero to five or ten.
Another explanation is that people think that they're wasting their time.
(17:33):
So I bet for a certain percentage of my population,
people thought, yeah, I spend a lot of time on it,
but it's dumb and I'm not going to buy that
terrible waste of time. I'll pay you nothing. And then
there's a third explanation, which is a number of people
might have just been mad so having enjoyed, so to speak,
a good for free, then they're asked how much would
(17:54):
you pay for it? They say, what are you talking about?
This is free? Like if people are asked how much
would you pay for clean air or the opportunity to
breathe oxygen? They might say zero in a survey because
they're rebelling against the very idea they'd have to pay.
So those are three explanations. I think the most fun
explanation is that people think they're wasting time. So we
(18:17):
need a category. Let's call them wasting time goods where
people devote a lot of minutes and maybe even hours
to a thing, but they know on reflection that it's
not doing them any good, so they're not going to
pay for them.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And so researchers did a study which actually paid people
to get off Facebook for a month. Tell me about
that study.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
So there's this study by Alcott and others, as one
thing very much in common with mine. What was elicited
was how much would you demand to be off? The
difference is people were actually paid to be off, and
then it turns out they have a good month, so
they're more satisfied with their life, they're less depressed, they're
less anxious, and every measure that's thrown at them, it's
(18:59):
a good month. And then they're asked after that good month,
how much would you the relevant person who had a
good month demand to be off Facebook? And on average
people give approximately the same number they gave before they
experienced the good month. Having said one hundred dollars the
first round, the average answer the second round is eighty
(19:20):
six dollars. Now, the part that's kind of intuitive about
that is eighty six is lower than one hundred. So
people learn that it's kind of good to be off
they don't demand as much. But the wild part is
that having had a good month, they should say, you
don't have to pay me anything. I'm getting off. This
is not a good thing for me. I just learned
(19:41):
I had a great month. And we've found none of
that they asked for eighty six. That's that's weird. The
authors of the study don't know how to.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Explain it, but Cass did have an explanation. Cass reason
that the participants may totally recognize that they don't enjoy
being on TikTok or Instagram, but they feel like they
have to be because everyone else is. They were suffering
from that negative non user externality the cast mentioned before
the break. Their own utility was worse because so many
(20:10):
other people were using social media platforms. They were product trapped.
But was Kaz's hypothesis right. Well, researchers recruited a new
group of participants and ask them a different willingness to
pay question.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
How much would you demand to be off contingent on
everyone in your community being off? That's the product trap question.
And what they found was if you ask people how
much would you demand to be off? You get the
standard answers as in my study. So people say, I
will require you to pay a lot to be off
these platforms, in this case TikTok and Instagram fifty dollars,
(20:45):
sixty dollars, seventy dollars, one hundred dollars. People are going
to demand real money to be off. But then if
people and these are college students, are asked how much
would you demand to be off contingent on everyone in
your community being off? Then they say, if everyone in
the community is off, then I will pay you. You
don't have to pay me a nickel. That's the dominant
(21:06):
sentiment and the explanation there is a little more intuitive,
I think, which is people are thinking, given the fact
that there is this platform and my people are on it,
I'm going to stay on and I'm going to get
off it kicking and screaming. But do I like this
status quo? I do not like the status quo at all.
(21:27):
If you ask me what I want to live in
a world that didn't have TikTok or Instagram, large numbers
of people say absolutely, I'll pay you real money to
produce it. This is a very profound finding, and we're
now studying it in multiple domains with respect to Starbucks
and iPhones and multiple products. But there's an assortment of
(21:49):
goods which people enjoy in the sense that they devote
time or money to them only because other people are
enjoying them in that sense. But they're not really enjoying
them at all.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I mean, this is pretty fascinating just as a happiness
researcher in general, because I think we're so locked into
people's individual utility we tend not to think about collective utility.
But I think this is a really special case of
collective utility where it's like, the collective utility is itself
making us choose things that are bad for us right completely.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
And it's a really tough collective action problem to get
yourself out of a product trap.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
It is a really tough collective action problem, but it's
also not impossible. We'll explore what we can do to
escape product traps when the Happiness Lab returns from the break.
(22:49):
I'm speaking with Harvard law professor and behavioral scientist Cass
Sunstein about his chapter in this year's World Happiness Report.
The research cast has shared so far paints a pretty
bleak conclusion. Even when people recognize that social media hurts
their well being, many still feel compelled to keep using
it so long as other people are using it too.
Social media, in other words, is a classic product trap,
(23:12):
which frankly kind of sucks. So given that most people
aren't leaving these platforms anytime soon. How do we break free?
Cassays that behavioral science suggests at least three different paths forward.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
First, they are individuals, communities of individuals. There are companies
and they're regulators, so first line of defense communities. So
people can band together like my sister and my family
did to say adults aren't going to get Christmas presents.
You can have a community of we're not going to
(23:45):
give our kids cell phones until eighth grade. You're exiting
from the product trap by virtue of some kind of
collective agreement. This is happening all over the country. Schools
can help by saying no cell phones in schools, and
that can be supplemented by parental efforts. Or there can
(24:07):
be agreements among people that just say we're going to
limit our time on social media. And this is just
a self help remedy on the part of groups who
are alert to the existence of the product trapped, who
can publicize its existence and make things better and better
is good, even if it doesn't lead to perfection. Then
(24:30):
there are the companies, and they're right now in a
bind where it appears that some of their economic interests
are competing with their values and also their desire not
to get a regulatory hammer. Instagram has done a bunch
of things to try to discourage young people from being
on their platform and forgetting more sleep. So there's a
(24:53):
lot that the companies could do on the regulatory side.
I'd be very cautious, just because I'm that kind of
guy and because we're talking about speech. But you could
imagine disclosure requirements for example, or when I was in
the government, we would into guidance documents, and if the
government has a best practice for let's say, social media
(25:15):
platforms with respect to product traps, that can do a
lot of good. I mean, I'm excited that you're using
the term product trap and that this has taken off
among students because the term is actually quite new. It
wasn't a thing. The very existence of a phrase can
provide the ingredients for a solution. We're seeing this starting
(25:38):
early days, but I'm hopeful that we're going to see
a lot more in the next six months.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I love this idea of having the phrase that can
be so so helpful. One of the things I find
most compelling about product traps was how my students reacted
when I first presented this idea in the happiness class.
These light bulbs went off where they just felt like
so much of the stuff that they spend time on
is one of these things, these things that they feel
like has little value for themselves, maybe is time wasting,
(26:05):
maybe is actively harmful, but they have to do it
because everybody else is doing it. And I feel like
with social media, there was an interesting transition talking to
my students. When it was just the Facebook days of
social media, I think people didn't realize it was as
much of a product trap as it was, in part
because it wasn't so negatively affecting students' utility just kind
of being on social media. But I think in the
(26:26):
age of tiktoks and reels, when students feel like they're
really sucked in and they can kind of feel it
in the moment of the product use, I think they
all get this really really clearly.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yes, so people know that they're trapped with respect to
social media platforms, there are other domains where people are
trapped and they don't know. And this is a little
like clue about the non isolated nature of this problem.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
So these product traps are everywhere. Are there past examples
of people solving them well? What has worked in the
past to solve them.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I think liquor and cigarettes are two clear examples where
young people would smoke and drink and some number of
them wish people weren't doing that, and that's there are
three strategies, which is individuals doing things to prevent the
product trap from damaging them, or companies trying to do things.
(27:24):
You know, might be a ban on smoking in public
places or something which has an expressive effect and ripples over,
or it might be government doing something. So you're a
very provocative idea which my co authors and I are
playing with, which is we're dealing with a non user
externality here, and the way you handle externalities typically is
imposed a financial thing, so taxes as a response, and
(27:49):
for cigarettes that's actually been done. There's Stiff's cigarette taxes,
which have contributed to the extraordinary reduction and smoking rates
of the United States and for many young smokers. It
took exactly the same form as what we're talking about
for social media platforms, where young people say I'm going
to smoke. Sure, I wish there was no And if
(28:12):
we'd run an experiment like the ones we've talked about,
we would have found that people would demand a lot
to give up smoking, but would probably pay for a
world in which no one in their group was smoking.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And this gets to an idea for which you are
very well known, This idea that we could find freedom
and what's known as libertarian paternalism. What is this idea?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
The idea is there are ways of intervening that completely
respect people's freedom, so they're libertarian, but that also steer
people in a direction that they wouldn't otherwise go, that
makes their lives go better. So libertarian. Some people are paternalists,
some people are. They typically don't agree with each other.
(28:54):
But if you think of a GPS device or warning,
for example, that certain foods have allergens, both of those
are liberty preserving. You can eat the food with the allergens.
You can say I see it as shrimp and peanuts
and I'm allergic in neither of them, and so I'm
going to go for it. Or you can say I
see the GPS device says here's the way to go
(29:15):
to New Haven. I have my own way, or I
have a scenic way and I'm going to use that.
So it's liberty preserving, hence libertarian. But a GPS device
is paternalist think it tells you here's how you ought
to go. So nodges are typically a form of libertarian paternalism.
That is, they preserve your freedom, as when you see
(29:37):
a nutrition facts panel at the pressery store, it kind
of pushes you a little bit, but it doesn't take
your freedom of choice away.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And so what would libertarian paternalism look like in the
social media case.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I'd like to see a lot of libertarian paternalism in
the social media case, in the first instance, from the companies.
So if a company says you've been on for five hours,
consider getting off, that's libertarian paternalism, a little like cars
will say, if you've been driving for a long time,
want to take a break, that's libertarian paternalism. The company
(30:13):
could nudge people to take breaks, to be off their
platform at certain hours to join the growing number of people,
let's say, who aren't using social media late at night.
There are any number of nudges that companies could use.
We can also imagine the government requiring disclosure of the
policies companies adopt to hook users. So sunlight, just as
(30:39):
BRANDI said, is the best of disinfectants, we could have
very light touch regulation, and that would be designed to
liberate people, maybe from product traps.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
The good news is sounding like, even though these things
are traps, if we can team up with our communities,
there's ways we can get out of them.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Sure, And if we look at the arc of human history,
even in the last twenty years, there's been an implicit
understanding that certain things they're not good for us, and
people have found their way out again with massive success stories.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Social media may feel like something we're stuck with, but
history shows that when we start to recognize patterns that
make us worse off, we often find ways to change them.
Step one is to name the problem. The next time
you're feeling stuck on social media or with some other
product you're using. Just because everyone else is name what's
going on, you can even say to yourself, there's a
(31:32):
reason I'm feeling this way because I'm dealing with a
product trap. Step number two, take action. Sometimes that means
working with your community to set new norms. Sometimes it
means advocating that the companies involved redesign their products, and
sometimes it means government stepping in with new rules. Recognizing
product traps for what they are can help us reshape
(31:53):
the environment around these technologies so that they serve our
well being rather than quietly undermining it. That's all for today,
but if you'd like to learn more about how social
media functions as a product trap check out this year's
World Happiness Report, which you can download for free at
Worldhappiness dot report. And if you have thoughts about today's episode,
(32:13):
we'd love to hear them. You can email us at
Happiness Lab at Pushkin dot fm, or leave us a
review to tell us what resonated. You can also sign
up to learn more about the science of happiness and
join my free newsletter on my website, Doctor Lari Santos
dot com. That's d R l a U r I
E s A n t o s dot com. We'll
(32:33):
be back in two weeks with a brand new season
about how to spring clean your well being, and we'll
be doing our own in house spring cleaning as we
head back into the Happiness Lab archive to dig up
some of our favorite tips, So be sure to come
back soon for the next episode of the Happiness Lab
with me, Doctor Vari Santos
Pushkin. The late American author and media critic Neil Postman
once famously wrote, technological change is not additive, it is ecological.
A new technology does not merely add something, it changes everything.
Postman made this observation all the way back in nineteen
(00:37):
ninety two, over a decade before smartphones and over a
decade before the launch of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
and TikTok. Postman's quote feels particularly relevant today, especially given
what researchers around the world are learning about the negative
effects of these technologies. Researchers like today's guest.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm CAAs Sunstein. I teach at Harvard. I work on
law and behavioral science. I've been working for about seven
years on social media and happiness and the divergence between
what people choose and what actually makes their lives better.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
You might know Cast from his influential book Nudge, which
he co authored with the Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Taylor.
Nudge explores how small changes in our environments can influence
the choices we make. Or you may know Casts from
his work in the Obama administration, where he helped bring
behavioral science into public policy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I had the Office of Information at Regulatory Affairs, analyzing
the effects of regulations to make sure that the benefits
are higher than the costs.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Cass is one of the scholars in behavioral science that
I really look up to. He's also one of the
most prolific academics I've ever met. I've lost count of
the number of books he's written. I think it's well
over fifty at this point, and that doesn't even include
the hundreds of academic articles he's authored, most of which
are about some strange or unexpected aspect of human behavior.
(02:01):
And this year, Cass adds to that long list as
one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, an
annual academic publication about the state of global well being.
Each year the World Happiness Report centers on a different theme.
The twenty twenty six report is all about how technology
affects human happiness, and in true cast Sunstein fashion, his
(02:21):
chapter in this year's report introduces an important new concept,
one that I find super helpful for making sense of
all the irrational ways we get stuck online and behaviors
that tend to decrease our health and our happiness.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
People are thinking given the fact that there is this
platform and my people are on it. I'm going to
stay on and I'm going to get off at kicking
and screaming. But do I like this status quo? I
do not like the status quo at all.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So if you're feeling trapped by your relationship with technology
and social media, stay tuned because casp will share this
exciting new concept from his chapter why this new concept
is so important and what understanding it means for escaping
the trap of social media platforms. All that when the
Happiness Lab returns right after some quick ads from our sponsors.
(03:20):
Behavioral scientist and legal scholar cast Sunstein spends a lot
of time thinking about ways that we can shape our
behavior to feel happier and healthier, and he's particularly interested
in cases in which people behave in ways that decrease
what economists call their utility. Since I'm guessing that many
of my listeners aren't trained economists, I asked Kass for
a quick definition of utility.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well, it basically means well being.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
So if you have a day where you're really enjoying
it and maybe life is very meaningful, and you think
at the end that was such a great day that
had a lot of utility if.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You had a day where you were in pain or
struggling or sad or scared or worried or depressed, that
would be a low utility day. So to think of
utility as pretty close to synonymous with well being is
fundamental right.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Economists tend to assume that people are rational, that is,
they should consistently behave in ways that maximize their utility.
But of course we do irrational stuff all the time, like,
for example, spending hour after hours scrolling on Instagram or
TikTok when that behavior makes us feel unproductive and pretty gross.
So why on earth do you so called rational creatures
(04:30):
like us waste so much time on platforms that don't
even feel good. That was what Casts set out to
explain in his chapter in this year's World Happiness Report,
and his explanation involves recognizing something new that social media
isn't just a typical kind of product. Instead, it falls
into the category of what Cast calls a product trap.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
A product trap is something where people buy it because
there's some negative thing that happens if they're not the
one who's buying it. So people sometimes buy goods whose
existence they deplore. That phenomenon is I think keenly interesting
and pervasive goods that people consume but they wish they
weren't around, And social media has that form. So people
(05:14):
are trapped. They are kind of forced, so to speak,
into a situation where they're on social media, even though
they would be happier if social media didn't exist.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
To better understand this idea of a product trap, let's
turn to the way that the usual sorts of products,
the non trappy kind, tend to affect utility. Let's say
I decide to buy a new blender. There are lots
of things about my new blender that might affect how
much I like it, things like how well it blends
through big chunks of ice, or how easy it is
to clean. All stuff related to how well that blender
(05:47):
works in my own kitchen. But one thing that won't
affect my utility is whether or not lots of other
people have bought the same blender. But for a small
subset of products, it matters whether other people buy the
same thing, either because keeping up with the joneses is
the main point of buying that product in the first place,
think luxury watches are designer handbags, or because the products
(06:08):
themselves get better simply because more people are using them.
Think social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Products like
these are what CAST calls product traps.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And the trap is that the company is able to
maneuver you into a situation in which you get the
thing because you would incur some sort of social cost
if you weren't engage.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
So that's a product trap. And now that you have
a word for this concept, I bet you're going to
start noticing product traps everywhere. This is a vocabulary term
that I introduce in my Yeale Happiness class, and it
is the one that they yell students resonate with the most.
They are just like, I'm so happy that there is
a word for this thing that I have been into
for a long time because I think that so many
(06:52):
of the goods that they're supposed to get in life
wind up being product traps or just the things that
they use. All the time, students brought up filters on
the photos that they use. They know it makes them
look kind of weird and that it's not great for
our body image that we're all using them, but they
don't want to be the one person who's not filtering
their photos. Bill in Middle age like me, w'd be
things like botox or you know, supplements or these things
(07:13):
where it's like I just wish the world didn't have
these things, but in fact, given to the world does
have them, I feel like I have to use them too.
And when I was talking with my production team, they
brought up Elf on a Shelf, which is a holiday
example of this, where it's like, if the kid down
the hall is their parents are doing Elf on the shelf,
you feel like you have to do it too, but
it just kind of makes you miserable.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I'll give you two examples, if I may. My sister
decided one Christmas that the adults would not give each
other presents anymore. The presence would only go to children.
And everyone thought that was an extremely great thing because
for years we've been giving each other presence where there
was no benefit, mostly because people would struggle to find
(07:54):
something people would like and people didn't really need another
tie or whatever. Another example is, you know, I go
to Ireland because my wife is Irish and I drink
a little bit of alcohol, even though I don't drink
alcohol anywhere but Ireland, and the reason is among my
(08:15):
beloved Irish relatives, I say sorry, I'm not drinking. The
reaction is maybe he's an alcoholic, or maybe he's very
negative about drinkers and the non alcoholic. I'm not negative
about drinkers, but I give that kind of signal to
some Irish relatives. And the idea is that this is
(08:36):
a pervasive thing.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Right, It's not just about the other people using these products.
It's about what happens to you if you're the one
person who chooses not to use this product. And this
is what you've called a consumption spillover or a negative
non user externality. Walk me through how that works.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The non user externality. That's a little fussier turn that
we're using, where if you're not using the thing, you suffer.
So let's suppose there's a party on a Monday night.
Everyone's going, and people might think I'm certainly going to
go to the party, because if I don't go, I'll
be giving a signal to people that I don't like parties,
(09:13):
that I don't like the hosts, that I'm an antisocial person,
that I'm a workaholic, or that I really like this
show on Netflix. So not going imposes a cost on you,
and the cost might be you know, self perception, or
you might think that the other people are going to
saying what's wrong with that guy? But it might be
there are some social events that you go to because
(09:33):
you kind of have to, but if they were canceled,
you'd think life is a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And a lot of these product traps where the consumptions
fill over occurs is because of a specific emotion, which
is this emotion of fomo. Right. This is what my
Yale students talk about and why I think these product
traps are so powerful and college students is like it's
literally affecting your sense of belonging.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So there's a connection between the product trap phenomenon the
behavioral phenomenon of loss aversion. People dislike losses that tend
to anticipate at least disliking losses about twice as much
as they like equivalent gains. If you think that I'm
going to miss out, let's say on a Instagram something
(10:14):
or on a TikTok something that's a loss, and loss
makes people feel very nervous. It's a distinctive kind of
fear of missing out, which is accompanied by a thought
that the thing that you're missing out from you wish
weren't occurring, and the fact that people get trapped in
this because of social norms or because of agile let's say,
(10:36):
company behavior, that's really concerning it might be that anyone
can entrap almost anyone by triggering fear of missing out.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
One of the domains of my students instantly saw that
they're dealing with a product trap. Interestingly was with AI
and specifically the use of AI to do their schoolwork,
the cheap bought use of AI, as they call it,
because I think all of them want to learn the
material and do the essay on their own and get
the sense of purpose that comes from that. But if
they know that everyone in the class is you using LLM,
(11:10):
they feel like, well, I'm a chump. If I'm putting
my time into this, I should just use these same
cheapbot tools that everyone else is. It seems like many
of them aren't using it because of their own individual
benefit of cheating. Many of them just kind of hated
the idea that everybody else is using it, but they
feel like, well, now I got to use it too.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's a great example. So AI for many students is
a product trap where you wish it didn't exist, but
contingent on its existence, you have to use it. That's
a different mechanism kind of from fear of missing out.
It's that you would be performing less well.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So product traps are bad for the people who get
trapped using these products. But what about for the companies
that make these products. It kind of seems like a
good deal for them.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh yeah, it's fantastic. So in business schools, this relatively
new stuff should be taught as a technique for attracting customers.
So if you're trying to sell a product to say
that you don't want to be one of the few
who and have it, that can be very effective, especially
(12:13):
if it is visible. So if you're visibly not someone
who's using let's say a social media platform that everyone
in your group is using, that triggers something in the
human brain. And if there's some product that's visible, it
might be that the exclusion and the cost that is
imposed by people who aren't included is the principal determinant
(12:35):
of consumption behavior. So we know that a company would
do very well in a very cheerful way to emphasize
the wonderfulness of being part of a large community of
people who are increasingly visibly buying or engaged in this.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It also seems like companies are doing everything in their
power to do this more and more. You can't just
have a like internet game as to be an Internet
game where you share your stats with other people. You're
always constantly showing off whether or not you're using the product,
which of course contributes to the product happiness of some
of these goods.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, if you don't post your number, you are giving
a signal of some maybe embarrassing sort that you're not participating,
that you're not good at the thing, that you're not playful.
And all of these things can be profoundly motivating, and
they can be exploited in a way that makes people
(13:29):
worse off.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
So now you know what a product trap is. And
I got to admit it kind of looks like social
media platforms qualify, but not so fast because casts and
other behavioral scientists have a strict empirical test for determining
whether a product truly counts as a product trap, one
that involves a curiously irrational thing that we tend to
do with our money. We'll hear all about that curious
(13:51):
monetary behavior right after this quick break. Like many behavioral
economists Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein, there's a lot of
time thinking about how people spend their money, and more specifically,
(14:13):
how much people are willing to pay for different products.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Suppose the question is would you benefit from having a
book or a dinner? How do we know? Well, we
can ask commuch you're willing to pay for it. It's
kind of the best measure we have. So if people
are willing to pay let's say fifteen dollars for a
book and not fifty, then we have some clue of
what the book is worth to them in terms of
(14:37):
well being. So willingness to pay is the best real
world measure we have off hand of what makes people
better off.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Economists also have lots of theories about how a rational
actor's willingness to pay should work. For example, the idea
that people will have some dollar amount in their heads
that represents a product's utility, how much it's worth to you.
So if someone is willing to pay fifty bucks for
say a blender, that dollar amount should be about the
same if you're thinking about buying the product or selling it.
(15:07):
But blenders and books are readler, non trappy kinds of products.
Ones that aren't affected all that much by whether other
people are buying the same product. Cas was interested in
whether social media platforms work differently than books and blenders,
and whether they qualified as product traps.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So I asked people how much you're willing to pay
for a month of social media platforms? And then I
asked a different population, how much money would you demand
to be off a platform for a month. So the
setup is people are asked how much would you pay
to use YouTube, or pay to use Facebook, or pay
to use Twitter, or how much would you demand to
(15:46):
be off? And there's a Nobel Prize winning theorem that
says the number has to be the same that if
people are willing to pay let's say six dollars for
movie ticket, they would demand six dollars to give up
the movie ticket value is value. And I was testing
whether this idea would be reflected in people's valuation of
(16:08):
social media platforms. But I got a staggering result. A
substantial number of people said I'll pay nothing to use
social media platforms, and the average answer was pretty low,
like five or ten dollars. So people are saying nothing,
or they're saying kind of a pittance to use social
media platforms and then to give up use. I got
(16:29):
a really big number, like people wanted like one hundred
dollars on average. So the disparity between how much people
would demand to give up use and how much people
are willing to pay to use Facebook is twenty to one.
There's a Nobel Prize winning theorem that says it has
to be one to one.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It was really surprising to me when you showed that
people are just not willing to pay anything to be
on social media, because if you look at just time use,
you might have predicted something very different. Right our young
people today, my Yale College students are on average in
some studies using these platforms for like four hours a day,
up to eight hours a day. But you ask them,
how much is it worth to you if you have
to pay money for and people are like nothing, I
(17:09):
would never pay to go on this stuff. What does
that tell you?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
So there are a couple different possibilities. One is people
are anchoring on the current price, which is zero. So
if the current price is zero and they asked how
much will you pay, they'll say zero, or they'll maybe
adjust a little bit up from zero to five or ten.
Another explanation is that people think that they're wasting their time.
(17:33):
So I bet for a certain percentage of my population,
people thought, yeah, I spend a lot of time on it,
but it's dumb and I'm not going to buy that
terrible waste of time. I'll pay you nothing. And then
there's a third explanation, which is a number of people
might have just been mad so having enjoyed, so to speak,
a good for free, then they're asked how much would
(17:54):
you pay for it? They say, what are you talking about?
This is free? Like if people are asked how much
would you pay for clean air or the opportunity to
breathe oxygen? They might say zero in a survey because
they're rebelling against the very idea they'd have to pay.
So those are three explanations. I think the most fun
explanation is that people think they're wasting time. So we
(18:17):
need a category. Let's call them wasting time goods where
people devote a lot of minutes and maybe even hours
to a thing, but they know on reflection that it's
not doing them any good, so they're not going to
pay for them.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And so researchers did a study which actually paid people
to get off Facebook for a month. Tell me about
that study.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
So there's this study by Alcott and others, as one
thing very much in common with mine. What was elicited
was how much would you demand to be off? The
difference is people were actually paid to be off, and
then it turns out they have a good month, so
they're more satisfied with their life, they're less depressed, they're
less anxious, and every measure that's thrown at them, it's
(18:59):
a good month. And then they're asked after that good month,
how much would you the relevant person who had a
good month demand to be off Facebook? And on average
people give approximately the same number they gave before they
experienced the good month. Having said one hundred dollars the
first round, the average answer the second round is eighty
(19:20):
six dollars. Now, the part that's kind of intuitive about
that is eighty six is lower than one hundred. So
people learn that it's kind of good to be off
they don't demand as much. But the wild part is
that having had a good month, they should say, you
don't have to pay me anything. I'm getting off. This
is not a good thing for me. I just learned
(19:41):
I had a great month. And we've found none of
that they asked for eighty six. That's that's weird. The
authors of the study don't know how to.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Explain it, but Cass did have an explanation. Cass reason
that the participants may totally recognize that they don't enjoy
being on TikTok or Instagram, but they feel like they
have to be because everyone else is. They were suffering
from that negative non user externality the cast mentioned before
the break. Their own utility was worse because so many
(20:10):
other people were using social media platforms. They were product trapped.
But was Kaz's hypothesis right. Well, researchers recruited a new
group of participants and ask them a different willingness to
pay question.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
How much would you demand to be off contingent on
everyone in your community being off? That's the product trap question.
And what they found was if you ask people how
much would you demand to be off? You get the
standard answers as in my study. So people say, I
will require you to pay a lot to be off
these platforms, in this case TikTok and Instagram fifty dollars,
(20:45):
sixty dollars, seventy dollars, one hundred dollars. People are going
to demand real money to be off. But then if
people and these are college students, are asked how much
would you demand to be off contingent on everyone in
your community being off? Then they say, if everyone in
the community is off, then I will pay you. You
don't have to pay me a nickel. That's the dominant
(21:06):
sentiment and the explanation there is a little more intuitive,
I think, which is people are thinking, given the fact
that there is this platform and my people are on it,
I'm going to stay on and I'm going to get
off it kicking and screaming. But do I like this
status quo? I do not like the status quo at all.
(21:27):
If you ask me what I want to live in
a world that didn't have TikTok or Instagram, large numbers
of people say absolutely, I'll pay you real money to
produce it. This is a very profound finding, and we're
now studying it in multiple domains with respect to Starbucks
and iPhones and multiple products. But there's an assortment of
(21:49):
goods which people enjoy in the sense that they devote
time or money to them only because other people are
enjoying them in that sense. But they're not really enjoying
them at all.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I mean, this is pretty fascinating just as a happiness
researcher in general, because I think we're so locked into
people's individual utility we tend not to think about collective utility.
But I think this is a really special case of
collective utility where it's like, the collective utility is itself
making us choose things that are bad for us right completely.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
And it's a really tough collective action problem to get
yourself out of a product trap.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
It is a really tough collective action problem, but it's
also not impossible. We'll explore what we can do to
escape product traps when the Happiness Lab returns from the break.
(22:49):
I'm speaking with Harvard law professor and behavioral scientist Cass
Sunstein about his chapter in this year's World Happiness Report.
The research cast has shared so far paints a pretty
bleak conclusion. Even when people recognize that social media hurts
their well being, many still feel compelled to keep using
it so long as other people are using it too.
Social media, in other words, is a classic product trap,
(23:12):
which frankly kind of sucks. So given that most people
aren't leaving these platforms anytime soon. How do we break free?
Cassays that behavioral science suggests at least three different paths forward.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
First, they are individuals, communities of individuals. There are companies
and they're regulators, so first line of defense communities. So
people can band together like my sister and my family
did to say adults aren't going to get Christmas presents.
You can have a community of we're not going to
(23:45):
give our kids cell phones until eighth grade. You're exiting
from the product trap by virtue of some kind of
collective agreement. This is happening all over the country. Schools
can help by saying no cell phones in schools, and
that can be supplemented by parental efforts. Or there can
(24:07):
be agreements among people that just say we're going to
limit our time on social media. And this is just
a self help remedy on the part of groups who
are alert to the existence of the product trapped, who
can publicize its existence and make things better and better
is good, even if it doesn't lead to perfection. Then
(24:30):
there are the companies, and they're right now in a
bind where it appears that some of their economic interests
are competing with their values and also their desire not
to get a regulatory hammer. Instagram has done a bunch
of things to try to discourage young people from being
on their platform and forgetting more sleep. So there's a
(24:53):
lot that the companies could do on the regulatory side.
I'd be very cautious, just because I'm that kind of
guy and because we're talking about speech. But you could
imagine disclosure requirements for example, or when I was in
the government, we would into guidance documents, and if the
government has a best practice for let's say, social media
(25:15):
platforms with respect to product traps, that can do a
lot of good. I mean, I'm excited that you're using
the term product trap and that this has taken off
among students because the term is actually quite new. It
wasn't a thing. The very existence of a phrase can
provide the ingredients for a solution. We're seeing this starting
(25:38):
early days, but I'm hopeful that we're going to see
a lot more in the next six months.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I love this idea of having the phrase that can
be so so helpful. One of the things I find
most compelling about product traps was how my students reacted
when I first presented this idea in the happiness class.
These light bulbs went off where they just felt like
so much of the stuff that they spend time on
is one of these things, these things that they feel
like has little value for themselves, maybe is time wasting,
(26:05):
maybe is actively harmful, but they have to do it
because everybody else is doing it. And I feel like
with social media, there was an interesting transition talking to
my students. When it was just the Facebook days of
social media, I think people didn't realize it was as
much of a product trap as it was, in part
because it wasn't so negatively affecting students' utility just kind
of being on social media. But I think in the
(26:26):
age of tiktoks and reels, when students feel like they're
really sucked in and they can kind of feel it
in the moment of the product use, I think they
all get this really really clearly.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yes, so people know that they're trapped with respect to
social media platforms, there are other domains where people are
trapped and they don't know. And this is a little
like clue about the non isolated nature of this problem.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
So these product traps are everywhere. Are there past examples
of people solving them well? What has worked in the
past to solve them.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I think liquor and cigarettes are two clear examples where
young people would smoke and drink and some number of
them wish people weren't doing that, and that's there are
three strategies, which is individuals doing things to prevent the
product trap from damaging them, or companies trying to do things.
(27:24):
You know, might be a ban on smoking in public
places or something which has an expressive effect and ripples over,
or it might be government doing something. So you're a
very provocative idea which my co authors and I are
playing with, which is we're dealing with a non user
externality here, and the way you handle externalities typically is
imposed a financial thing, so taxes as a response, and
(27:49):
for cigarettes that's actually been done. There's Stiff's cigarette taxes,
which have contributed to the extraordinary reduction and smoking rates
of the United States and for many young smokers. It
took exactly the same form as what we're talking about
for social media platforms, where young people say I'm going
to smoke. Sure, I wish there was no And if
(28:12):
we'd run an experiment like the ones we've talked about,
we would have found that people would demand a lot
to give up smoking, but would probably pay for a
world in which no one in their group was smoking.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And this gets to an idea for which you are
very well known, This idea that we could find freedom
and what's known as libertarian paternalism. What is this idea?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
The idea is there are ways of intervening that completely
respect people's freedom, so they're libertarian, but that also steer
people in a direction that they wouldn't otherwise go, that
makes their lives go better. So libertarian. Some people are paternalists,
some people are. They typically don't agree with each other.
(28:54):
But if you think of a GPS device or warning,
for example, that certain foods have allergens, both of those
are liberty preserving. You can eat the food with the allergens.
You can say I see it as shrimp and peanuts
and I'm allergic in neither of them, and so I'm
going to go for it. Or you can say I
see the GPS device says here's the way to go
(29:15):
to New Haven. I have my own way, or I
have a scenic way and I'm going to use that.
So it's liberty preserving, hence libertarian. But a GPS device
is paternalist think it tells you here's how you ought
to go. So nodges are typically a form of libertarian paternalism.
That is, they preserve your freedom, as when you see
(29:37):
a nutrition facts panel at the pressery store, it kind
of pushes you a little bit, but it doesn't take
your freedom of choice away.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And so what would libertarian paternalism look like in the
social media case.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I'd like to see a lot of libertarian paternalism in
the social media case, in the first instance, from the companies.
So if a company says you've been on for five hours,
consider getting off, that's libertarian paternalism, a little like cars
will say, if you've been driving for a long time,
want to take a break, that's libertarian paternalism. The company
(30:13):
could nudge people to take breaks, to be off their
platform at certain hours to join the growing number of people,
let's say, who aren't using social media late at night.
There are any number of nudges that companies could use.
We can also imagine the government requiring disclosure of the
policies companies adopt to hook users. So sunlight, just as
(30:39):
BRANDI said, is the best of disinfectants, we could have
very light touch regulation, and that would be designed to
liberate people, maybe from product traps.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
The good news is sounding like, even though these things
are traps, if we can team up with our communities,
there's ways we can get out of them.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Sure, And if we look at the arc of human history,
even in the last twenty years, there's been an implicit
understanding that certain things they're not good for us, and
people have found their way out again with massive success stories.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Social media may feel like something we're stuck with, but
history shows that when we start to recognize patterns that
make us worse off, we often find ways to change them.
Step one is to name the problem. The next time
you're feeling stuck on social media or with some other
product you're using. Just because everyone else is name what's
going on, you can even say to yourself, there's a
(31:32):
reason I'm feeling this way because I'm dealing with a
product trap. Step number two, take action. Sometimes that means
working with your community to set new norms. Sometimes it
means advocating that the companies involved redesign their products, and
sometimes it means government stepping in with new rules. Recognizing
product traps for what they are can help us reshape
(31:53):
the environment around these technologies so that they serve our
well being rather than quietly undermining it. That's all for today,
but if you'd like to learn more about how social
media functions as a product trap check out this year's
World Happiness Report, which you can download for free at
Worldhappiness dot report. And if you have thoughts about today's episode,
(32:13):
we'd love to hear them. You can email us at
Happiness Lab at Pushkin dot fm, or leave us a
review to tell us what resonated. You can also sign
up to learn more about the science of happiness and
join my free newsletter on my website, Doctor Lari Santos
dot com. That's d R l a U r I
E s A n t o s dot com. We'll
(32:33):
be back in two weeks with a brand new season
about how to spring clean your well being, and we'll
be doing our own in house spring cleaning as we
head back into the Happiness Lab archive to dig up
some of our favorite tips, So be sure to come
back soon for the next episode of the Happiness Lab
with me, Doctor Vari Santos
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