Last updated on 21 August 2020
How do our favorite mobile apps make us completely addicted? How does our students develop their addiction to mobile apps? The answer is simple. Because they were designed for this.
This is demonstrated by the Dopamine Web Series aired last year by Arte. This series unveils in an offbeat way how our favorite applications make us dependent. Look at it, it's online, you're going to learn amazing things.
I am inexcusable that I missed this eight-episode series proposed by Arte with the Canopé network last year. She's really great.
Table of Contents
Some applications secrete a molecule in our brain: dopamine
This is the name of the series. And this is demonstrated by the survey carried out by the author of this work of information and public utility.
In eight episodes of about ten minutes each, Arte deciphers addiction to mobile apps. Each episode reveals the mechanisms designed and introduced by the designers of the applications to make them indispensable to you.
Known apps, the basis, to capture your attention and activate in the brain the molecule responsible for pleasure, motivation and addiction: dopamine.
Were you talking to the cell phone?
An eight-episode series for all audiences
Dopamine is an excellent work that required several months of research from its author. Didactics without being moralistic, with a good dose of humor and impeccable achievement, the series highlights addiction mechanisms and their potential dangers. This survey work benefited from the advice of researchers in computer science and mathematics at Inria Lille.
Choice of images, music, vocabulary used, everything sounds right. You can advise or broadcast it without fear in front of a teen audience. It'll talk to them. An excellent series praised by the press and rightly so:
‘Arte deciphers the lucrative motives of app manufacturers and the sometimes vicious logics of how they operate’ – Neon Mag
Dopamine offers eight episodes:
- Episode 1: Tinder
- Episode 2: Facebook
- Episode 3: Candy Crush
- Episode 4: Instagram
- Episode 5: YouTube
- Episode 6: Snapchat
- Episode 7: Uber
- Episode 8: Twitter
A pedagogical file to accompany the series
In addition to this series, the Canopé network has published a particularly welcome accompanying pedagogical dossier. It is still available for download here.
The dossier complements the series with several particularly interesting articles by researchers working on capturing attention. Among them is that of Yves Citton: The job of marketers is not just to meet our expectations, but just as much to influence them.
In a second part, the folder offers several pedagogical tracks to work on the subject with your students.
This series is a great way to address this issue of our dependence on mobile phones and social networks. Quality material to be set aside to help educate digital citizens aware of the advantages and disadvantages of digital. To be completed with this list of useful sites for uncovering false information or these articles published in the section media and information literacy.
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