Rat Park and Modern Day Addictions

How phone addictions inform us on the importance of community

Justice Jenson

Co-edited by Jared Beardsley and Walker Wambsganss

26 August 2023

Introduction

“Where is my phone?” You think to yourself. You begin to frantically check the last places that you were at. 

Room. 

Toilet. 

Couch. 

Under the couch. 

As your phone is still not in view, you begin to feel somewhat frenzied as you hastily recollect the last place you used it. You search and search until you ask someone to call it for you, and you let out a monstrous sigh of relief as you hear it ring in the not-so-distant next room. You pick it up and sit down as you mindlessly go back to scrolling. 

We have all experienced this. In that moment, losing your phone is a seemingly dire issue, and, when the scope is widened, is a universal experience – a scavenger hunt rite of passage, if you will.

But what if the behavior that we exhibit when searching for this piece of hardware harkens to a more sinister meaning? What if, with the energy and ferocity that we put into finding our phones, we display a much more worrisome condition? What if we are addicted to our phones?

After much research and thought, I’m writing this essay in order to suggest two things: 

1. to be conscious of your phone and its effects on you, and 

2. to realize the importance of your community.

I hope to achieve these things by doing the following:

First, I’m going to go through the background of our cell phones and the history that lay behind them. Next, I will outline the addictive experience and how modern cell phones seek to capitalize on it. Finally, I will examine and analyze a case study on addictive behavior and apply it to human interaction with cell phones.

The History of the Cell Phone

When we look at smartphones and alike electronics, we have to first look at two things: 

1. what problems their creators tried to solve, and 

2. what specifically about the devices accomplished that solution.

The Root Causes

Smartphones are now designed to allure and capture their users’ attention. This is a standard practice among electronics-centric industries. However, there must’ve been a proper cause to justify the creation of the cell phone… right? Well, there indeed was a reason – and a quite basic one at that. 

The problem that was initially solved with the creation of the modern smartphone, largely symbolized by Apple’s creation of the iPhone, was the problem of portable connectivity. Sure, we had telephones before the iPhone. After all, Alexander Graham Bell invented the contraption in 1876 (History), and his goal, at the base level, was to allow people to be able to maintain and grow their relationships, even if they couldn’t see each other face to face due to immense distance. This revolutionized the world, as we all know. The world we know today would largely not be possible if it wasn’t for the marvel that was the telephone. 

The First Solutions

At the time the basic smartphone was invented in 1992 (Heathman), we had enjoyed the fruits of wired connectedness for over 115 years. Life was better and more connected than ever before in large part to the creation of the first cellular telephones in 1973 (Križanović). By this time, cellular telephones had become immensely popular; however, these rehashed technological marvels had one problem: they were immensely cumbersome. Once this problem became enough of a problem, electronics companies like Blackberry and HP rose to the challenge. The two tried to mitigate this unwieldiness in the early 2000s with their 5810 and iPAQ-line phones, respectively, and these were successes by nearly every measure. Blackberry was one of the early innovators of smartphone technology and created some of the first modern “smartphones,” and HP, with their adoption of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system lineup, led the world in mobile phone and smartphone sales in the early 2000s (Krakow).

As mentioned before, the smartphones of the early 2000s were successes by every measure, but, in their solving of the blockiness of 1990s-era portable phones, they had inadvertently created more problems… one of which being space inefficiency. The small hardware buttons and screens were a leap from the previous generations, but they were just that: small and hard to use at the breakneck pace of life. 

It seemed that, in giving users the tools they wanted, the users found new problems for designers and manufacturers alike to solve. It would take a miracle to not only solve the current problems but to also pave a way to make sure future problems could be dealt with efficiently and through a medium intuitive and easy for users to implement.

Enter: the iPhone.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2008, he didn’t just solve the aforementioned problem of space inefficiency, he solved another, and another, and another.

First, the iPhone solved the immediate hurdle of space inefficiency through its intuitive touchscreen system; however, this wasn’t Apple’s main intention. Apple was and still is a computer company by trade, and they had learned that, while the exciting semiconductor race of the 80s and 90s had helped them hit record sales, the company knew that the public's enthusiasm regarding the application of Moore’s Law wouldn’t last forever. With the creation of the iPhone, Apple didn’t create a phone, they created a pocket computer that also allowed the user to tap into its telephone functions (Ashton).

Apple’s creation also solved the problem of problem solving through its software update process. Since problems with its devices could be hotfixed and the changes implemented over a simple data download, Apple had created a platform which was capable of never-before-seen longevity. Apple had created a legendary product.

However, as always, there’s a catch. When Apple unveiled its new ‘technological cure-all,’ it created one more problem. Sure, Apple would solve technological updates by periodically releasing new editions of the iPhone, but people can only buy so many iPhones. Apple couldn’t simply expect people to buy new phones with every new iPhone release. The company had to innovate. 

From Hardware To People

As Apple sold more and more phones, the company realized that, while its phones have extreme longevity in and of themselves, they were only really used for telephone functions. Apple realized that, in order to build and maintain brand loyalty, it needed to make sure its users used its products more. Thus started the electronics company standard of user retention.

If a company can reliably retain a user’s attention, then they can reliably monetize that user either through ads or continued purchases of its products. The logic seems basic and innocent enough until one thinks on such a strategy’s ramifications. If a company holds to this strategy and chooses to exploit the attention of its users for long enough, then it would be able to see high user retention and profits while allowing its users to think that they are in control of their usage. 

This is closely related to an analogy regarding a bear and a bear-trap. A bear may be as independent and dominant as he wants, but if he is easily lured to a trap by the smell or scant sample of food on its pressure plate, then he is at the mercy of the spring holding it back from confining him to a world of pain and uncertainty. 

Much like the bear, if we are easily lured in by smartphones with the hope or promise of entertainment, then we are at the mercy of its developers regarding how much time or energy we spend on them. And oftentimes, all that developers and hardware manufacturers have to do is keep making applications and devices interesting and encourage the public to engage with them.

It is reasonably safe to say, then, that we are very easily enticed to engage with electronic devices. This claim is supported with usage statistics. According to Jack Flynn from Zippia, there are over 6.92 billion people with smartphones on this planet, and they average a whopping 7 hours per day on their smartphones (Howarth). Assuming both that cell phone users will have normal lifespans of 72.98 years (Macrotrends) and that these people receive their first cell phone at the age of 11-and-a-half years old – which is the average age of first-time cell phone users according to Stanford Medicine – each cell phone user will spend just shy of 156,826 hours of their lives spent on a cell phone. That is 21.175 years of life spent staring at a screen per person, or, cumulatively, 123.9 billion years in total lost to screens. 

In short, we have become the bear.

The Addictive Experience

While there are absolutely amazing uses of smartphones for important tasks like communication, leisure, and work, I cannot find a rationalization for spending over two decades of life on a screen.

Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the founders of Microsoft and Apple respectively, limit their children’s use of the technology that they designed. In fact, “Steve Jobs, who created the iPhone and iPad, wouldn’t let his kids use either of these devices until his death in 2012” (Mike). When these men who created the very technology that we so often used, would not allow their own children to interact with their own creation, then I believe there is something that we are missing on the cellphone’s (or internet as a whole) effect on human psychology. 

“It’s A Trap!”

The cellphones we use are designed to addict, especially applications within our cellphones like Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok. Have you noticed that after TikTok’s explosion in popularity, almost every single social media application adapted a form of TikTok’s newest innovation, the “scrolling” technique. In a study done by Harvard Business Review, they figured out the genius of this method. They discovered that watching videos simply begat the desire to watch more similar videos. This study seemed to confirm the idea of “scrolling momentum” which states that the more you scroll and the more videos one sees, the more scrolling you want to do. While this has always been true, TikTok has mastered this strategy. While in the past, it would take a few minutes to enter into a so-called rabbit hole after switching through a few videos. However, TikTok picks nabs that “scrolling momentum” much faster by way of much shorter and streamlined content. This is why it is such a common phenomenon that just watching a few videos turns into an hours-long spiral of straight social media consumption. No one ever intends for this doom-spiral, it was designed to happen by the people who designed these applications. This is how these corporations make money. They keep you hooked by designing necessary devices that have components that are heavily addictive (The Psychology). 

The “Rat Park” Study

In addition to being highly addictive, cell phones and their addicting powers largely target isolated and lonely people. The famous “rat park” experiment reveals the nature of addiction itself. In this experiment, a rat was set up alone in a cage with two water bottles, one that had regular water and one that was laced with hardcore drugs such as heroin or cocaine. Rat after rat would repeatedly drink from the drug-laced liquid until it overdosed and died. 

However, when a rat was placed in a “rat park” with other rats, things changed. When the rats were with a community of other rats, they “never overdosed.” They often preferred the water to the drug-laced liquid when set up in a community. While they did consume the addictive substance, they always did so in moderation and, as previously mentioned, never overdosed (Lloyd).

This experiment educated humanity on the nature of addiction. If the environment you have around you is not satisfying your social or physical needs, this study tells us that it is in our nature to desperately scramble for any source of pleasure or satisfaction that we can get… even if it kills us. I have experienced this myself – except not the killing part.  My room has often felt like a prison that I seal myself into with my phone whenever I feel dissatisfied or uncomfortable, but when I’m with my friends and/or family I’m able to decompress and be comfortable.

Conclusion

While this paper may be dark or fearsome, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We thankfully live in a society where our choices very profoundly impact the quality of our lives. We have the freedom to choose, and as such our awareness of pitfalls such as those found in Rat Park are key to avoiding them. We must remain vigilant to care for ourselves by joining some, nay any sort of community so that we do not fall to the temptation to imbibe ourselves with mindless content just to feel something. Go to “Rat Park” to avoid wasting years of your life blankly staring at a screen that was designed to enslave you. Community is absolutely essential to a stable and meaningful life.