Tristan Harris > Quotes

“The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology that’s on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely.

We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.”
― Tristan Harris

“By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them with new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.”
― Tristan Harris

“The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices?”
― Tristan Harris

“The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices? One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards . . . Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.”
― Tristan Harris

“Right now it's as if all of our technology is basically only asking our lizard brain what's the best way to impulsively get you to do the nest tiniest thing with your time, instead of asking: in your life, what would be time well spent for you?”
― Tristan Harris

“Social media start to look and feel more like products that's about maximising consumption and less like 'bicycles for our minds'.”
― Tristan Harris

“I don't know a more urgent problem than this. Because this problem is underneath all other problems.”
― Tristan Harris

“Imagine walking into a control room with a bunch of people hunched over a desk with little dials, and that that control room will shape the thoughts and feelings of a billion people. This might sound like science fiction, but this actually exists right now, today.”
― Tristan Harris