How we use dopamine to get you to spend less time on your phone

Have you thought about what happens in your brain as you use TikTok? You might notice that as you watch a video you’re constantly thinking about swiping. Perhaps not actively but it’s always on the edge of your consciousness.

The core mechanic that makes TikTok, Reels or Shorts addictive is not the short nature of the videos but the ability to scroll through them. It’s built on a very dangerous insight about dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that acts as your brain’s reward center and our bodies are hardwired to reward us when we do things that are evolutionarily productive. The thing most people get wrong is that it’s not actually the pleasurable act that releases dopamine; it’s the prediction error between your expectation and reality.

Every time you swipe to scroll to the next video you’re pulling the slot machine. And if you get a really interesting video that crosses the line your expectations had set: BOOM dopamine released. But, this doesn’t last long and you’re back to scrolling hoping to hit that high once more. When you hit, the pleasure is surprisingly short-lived. You start itching to pull the lever again because your brain yearns for that initial pleasure all over again.

People already innately recognize this, a common meme comment you may see on videos is: “holy refresh pull”. As the user sat in front of the slot machine that is their feed, refreshing frenetically, they were finally rewarded with a good video. A real addict to the slot machine of the algorithmic feed might notice that even as they watch a great video or read an engaging post they have an irresistible temptation to refresh and see what’s new (usually nothing…).

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a good scroll on TikTok and in fact you should spend time on any platform that brings you joy. What we want to do is close the delta between how long people want to spend on these platforms and how long they actually spend.

The Landscape

Screen time is one of the biggest categories on the App Store. Yet, for such a saturated category it’s surprisingly limited in terms of innovation.

All the apps work the same way:

1. you set some apps to “track” or “block”
2. the app lets you set limits
3. when you go over, it either
   • shows you a wall that prevents you from opening it
   • adds some delay so you have to wait for the app to open
   • makes you do a task before it opens

But, we found 2 key issues with this.

First: the only person who knows if your usage on the app is good is you.

Instagram for example has both reels and messaging. You could be opening the app to respond to a time-sensitive message as you get blocked. And there’s no anger like the anger of the wronged. Only you know why you opened the app.

Second: the slippery slope.

I found that once I had tapped ignore limit once on one of these walls, it became almost impossible to keep using the screen time app. Somehow knowing that I had gone past before made it really hard to avoid going over again. Research shows I may not be alone…

Island

What if we could give that innate desire to spend less time on your phone some teeth? Give you a real reason to be good to yourself?

To do this we looked to the most addicting apps we could think of: idle games. Idle games are pure dopamine. The exponential rise in gems or coins ties perfectly into the prediction error of our dopamine machinery. Each upgrade unlocks an exponentially better farm/factory/whatever than the one you had. And being away from the app triggers the human aversion to loss, every minute away is a minute you could be spending upgrading and levelling up.

How could we steal this machinery and use it for good?

Introducing, Island, a little island for you to take care of and enjoy. Just like an idle game you can upgrade it and increase your farm’s output but with a key difference: the best way to increase your production is not with an incremental upgrade but via staying off your phone.

Principles:

1. No blocking, no nagging.
2. Reward users for following through
3. Give them a reason to care

When a person crosses the limit we show a wall like our peers but our wall is more of a property line - you can simply tap the button to go through to the app. It’s purpose is solely to let you know that you’re about to cross the threshold you set for yourself. It never stops you from going through.

More importantly, you get a continuing reason to stick to your limits. Each time you cross the limit, your island incurs the wrath of a hurricane. Lightning could strike your farm house and your harvesters while cutting your farm’s output.

The next time you open one of those apps you don’t really enjoy, you might find yourself opening Island to see how long you have left. And while you’re there you might just get that dopamine fix from renovating your farm.

Before this app we were building B2B software and boy oh boy was this a welcome change. Unlike everything we built before, with this project we experienced a unique combination of enjoying the work, feeling like we were making a positive contribution to society and allowing ourselves to be creative. We loved the process of building this app, hiding easter eggs and we even drew most of the art ourselves. We hope you’ll enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it.