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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Because on one side you have a kid and on the other side you have hordes of psychologists paid millions for devising better ways to trick them into clicking.
Calling them psychologists is giving them too much credit, but you're right that the companies trying to trick them are putting tons of resources into it.
Very often this shit is designed by people with psychology degrees.
I thought marketing and media people generally have communication degrees.
User researcher is a job that’s becoming more common at tech firms, and usually requires a psychology degree or similar
You don't need a full penetration of psychology degrees, just a sufficient amount.
The specific field is marketing psychology, it's a subset of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology.
I'm not going to mention the company I work for, but I can verify that psychology is being used to advertise to kids. Mass manufactured food industry.
They will pick out very specific colours, mascot attributes, shapes and more to draw kids attention.
I shit you not, there's a certain cookie brand with a happy bear on the box that has eyes that look upwards. The entire purpose of this is to subconsciously make kids think that they're making eye contact with the happy mascot, so they'll trust it more. Certain colours are also believed to trigger more hunger in consumers. They play on so many factors in advertising that it isn't funny.
This is just one example, but this is definitely a thing that is happening in many companies.
Social engineers?
The serious stuff is increasingly nation states, and there are for sure psychologists involved in that.
Not to mention they're kids... you know, with limited life experience compared to adults.