From Technoskeptical, January 5:
Is a generation trained with points and badges capable of acting on principle?
If you’ve spent time around teenagers and twenty-somethings lately, you may have heard them using the terms “plus aura” and “minus aura” or “negative aura.” Roughly equivalent to “cool” and “uncool,” but rooted more in the social currency of attention and approval, this slang reflects the pervasive gamification of virtually every aspect of today’s youth culture.
Gamification – the use of video-game-like elements such as points, badges, and achievements – is ubiquitous in modern educational software, social media apps, and entertainment platforms. The approach is popular among software developers because it is effective in driving short-term engagement. Unfortunately, the long-term effects on users are quite harmful.
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Rewards
For over a century, behavioral researchers have known that reward-based learning is the key to shaping behavior. Put simply: we do more of what makes us feel good. When those good feelings emerge from within oneself (like a sense of accomplishment for achieving a goal, or personal satisfaction for learning a new skill), they are referred to as “intrinsic rewards.” When they come from external sources, like good grades, gold stars, and achievement badges, they are referred to as “extrinsic rewards.”
Clearly, gamification is based on extrinsic rewards. And that’s a big problem, because research has shown that using extrinsic rewards to motivate children undermines their ability to take action based on intrinsic rewards. For example, children who are given points and stickers for reading books become less likely to enjoy reading for its own sake. Giving kids rewards for reading doesn’t teach them to focus on reading; it teaches them focus on getting rewards.
Incidentally, this unintended consequence applies to virtually any form of instant gratification or visible metric, including grades. This is why, in every generation, many bright, self-motivated preschoolers become bored, apathetic elementary students who do the bare minimum required to earn decent grades.
But the gamification trend has made the situation far worse. Today, everything from social interaction to walking has been gamified with digital ratings and participation streaks. As a result, we now have a generation of young people motivated almost entirely by extrinsic rewards, rather than by core principles or the intrinsic value of what they’re doing.
An often-overlooked problem with gamification is that whoever hands out the rewards decides what behavior is reward-worthy. Outside of school, rewards are often measured in likes, follows, shares, and other indications of peer attention and endorsement that comprise “aura.” Because of this, children who have been conditioned to focus on extrinsic rewards become young adults who are highly susceptible to peer pressure and prone to attention-seeking behavior.
As every middle-schooler knows, the easiest way to get attention is through behavior that is crude or antisocial. Broadly speaking, this is nothing new: every generation grew up with the class clown, the class flirt, and the class troublemaker – students who acted out in various ways to get attention. But while this used to be viewed by other kids as somewhat “desperate” or anomalous, acting out to get attention is now not only normalized, it is incentivized by social media algorithms that amplify emotionally-charged, inflammatory, and transgressive behavior.
Of course, not all attention-seeking behavior is rewarded by gaining aura. Appearing clumsy, foolish, or insincere is often regarded as negative aura. Because of this, outrage – especially performative outrage – has become one of the most socially rewarding and algorithmically-endorsed forms of attention-seeking behavior for Gen Z. By combining the self-righteous certainty of youth with social validation and the endorsement of powerful and well-funded but purportedly counter-culture organizations like BLM and Students for Justice in Palestine, young people have found that social activism is an effective way to gain aura, even though many of them have virtually no understanding of the issues they are denouncing.
While previous generations of protesters risked their reputations and social status to fight for ideals they deeply believed in, many members of Gen Z are doing the opposite: they are enhancing their reputations and social status by jumping on a bandwagon of peer-approved outrage.
This troubling phenomenon begs the question: has relentless gamification crippled Gen Z’s ability to act – or even think – authentically?
What’s Next?....
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Also at Technoskeptical:
Who Rules America?
It's not a conspiracy, it's business as usual
You've probably never heard of G. William Domhoff, but he is quite a remarkable man. Born in 1936, he is still actively working and lecturing on a topic he has been researching for over half a century: who controls our society, and how do they do it?
Domhoff's magnum opus is a slim volume entitled Who Rules America. He has updated it every few years since its initial publication in 1967, and the eighth edition was released in 2023. While the details and specific facts and figures have evolved over time, Domhoff's fundamental observations have remained consistent for the last six decades....
....MUCH MORE
And very related to both the first and especially the second Technoskeptical link:Pity the poor avocado-eating graduates: "University-educated millennials have absorbed elite values but will never enjoy the lifestyle"
