Designed to Hook: The Psychology of Addictive Tech

Your child's brain is being engineered for dependence. Here's how to interrupt it.

Dark patterns, dopamine loops and persuasive design. Break the loop without willpower battles or screen-time fights.

Social media companies employ teams of behavioural psychologists, neuroscientists, and UX designers with a single brief: keep users on the platform as long as possible. For children and teenagers, whose prefrontal cortices are still developing and whose reward systems are hyper-responsive, the results can be devastating. This course exposes the specific design mechanisms — variable reward schedules, infinite scroll, autoplay, notification engineering — that create compulsive use patterns clinically mirroring substance addiction. You'll leave with practical, evidence-based strategies to interrupt these patterns and build a home culture where your children use technology, rather than being used by it.