đź’‰Breaking The Habit of a Lifetime - The difficulty of switching to private tech đź’Š
Recently, we've had conversations with customers who struggle to adopt the kind of technology we provide so this is a frank post about the elephant in the room, the challenge of giving up a drug so embedded in our lives in favour of going cold turkey and removing oneself from tech addiction.
Tech Addiction and Dopamine Hooks
The drug analogy is bang on in this case.
Our brains are wired for rewards and for that feel good factor making us repeat actions that led to that feeling.
Technology has figured out how to tap directly into that ancient reward pathway creating a ''dopamine loop''.
Every ping, every like, every new message notification triggers a tiny release of dopamine.
A little hit in your brain which feels really good, good enough for the brain to remember to ''do that again''.
The loop looks something like this:
👉 Cue: Your phone buzzes, a notification pops up, or you simply feel a moment of boredom or uncertainty.
👉 Routine: You pick up your phone, unlock it, and start scrolling/checking.
👉 Reward: You see something new, get a like, read a message, find something entertaining – resulting in a dopamine hit.
👉 Craving: The good feeling is transient, leaving you wanting another hit, reinforcing the desire to repeat the routine the next time you get a cue.
This loop is incredibly powerful because tech companies are brilliant at engineering their platforms to maximise these rewards for profit.
How Tech is Engineered to Hook Your Brain
App designers, services and social media platforms employ sophisticated psychological principles to keep you engaged.
👉 Notifications: These are explicit cues, designed to interrupt whatever you’re doing and pull you back in.
👉 Infinite Scroll: There’s no natural stopping point. Unlike a book with a finite number of pages, the content just keeps loading, encouraging endless consumption.
👉 Personalization: Algorithms learn what you like and feed you more of it, making the potential rewards more targeted and compelling.
👉 Social Validation: Likes, comments, shares, and followers tap into our deep-seated need for social acceptance and belonging, providing potent social rewards.
👉 Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): The constant stream of updates creates anxiety that something important or exciting is happening without you, driving compulsive checking.
🕸Weaving a Sticky Web🕸
On top of the designed dopamine loops, big tech will weave you into their ecosystems so tightly that is is extremely difficult to escape.
Think cloud based storage of your photos and files, email, contact storage, accounts, passwords and in an indirect manner, mobile contracts.
When you try to leave these ecosystems you notice the deliberate ''dark design'' behind their export and transfer tools making it a frustrating and time consuming process.
Of course, they design things this way to keep you a customer for life and at the same time, retain access to your profitable and constant data production for as long as possible.
Moving to Better Tech
Reboot Privacy's tech, boringly gives you none of these hits and no dopamine loop. This naturally comes as a disappointment to a brain so hooked on big tech's drugs of choice.
Our tech seems unassuming and doesn't immediately start ''dinging'' when you turn it on for the first time, desperate for your attention.
What it does do better than any tech on the planet is work silently and tirelessly in the background at preventing privacy and security harms.
It will not show off or demand your approval for these efforts but will act as sentinel between you and the rapidly deteriorating digital world.
đź’ŞEffort and Motivation Requiredđź’Ş
The transition to new tech is not easy. Although we make it as easy as we possibly can with useful apps to provide functionality, detailed guide books on each device, this community group and contact via email it takes a determined effort to export your personal data and files away from big tech's platforms and become familiar with a different way of doing things.
Our devices are based on Android so those familiar with this operating system will see similarities but coming from Apple can be extra daunting and although we offer guidance on how to export files such as contacts within our guides, unpicking your data from years of centralised usage will take time and energy.
This group has members several years along their degoogling journey, some who have just started and many too daunted to start.
All we can say is you're in good company and everyone here is here for the same reasons.
Nobody can guide you through every step and as a small team we are unable to be on-call for everyone despite wanting to be, so much of the effort must come from those who set out on their journey when they decide enough is enough and who take the less trodden path to avoid the digital prison ahead.
🦶Take your time, step by step
đź› Have the correct tools in your arsenal
đź’¬Seek support from fellow tech pilgrims here
“It Won’t Be Easy, But It Will Be Worth It” - A powerful expression of resilience, hope, and the reward that comes from enduring challenges. It’s a reminder that while the path to our goals may be difficult, the satisfaction and fulfilment derived from reaching them are what make the journey worthwhile.