My parents constantly tell me that I'm on my phone too much, on the internet in general, too much.

I just do it automatically, so I have to force myself to stop. It's horribly easy distraction.

My phone's gotten in the way of what I'm doing. There's been a lot of talk lately about internet addictions, people who just cannot get off being online.

And it may not necessarily be all their fault because there are built-in mechanisms.

People don't like to really talk about this that are actually working in the digital background.

That contributes to you staying on the same

site for hours upon hours and wanting to go back when you're not there. These are carefully

crafted secret techniques that we're going to expose here in this Commando on Demand podcast,

and they're used by web designers and big tech companies to keep you engaged. This has nothing to do with, say, a clickbait photograph that keeps you gazing for a while

or makes you click a link.

I'm talking about a specific tactic that compels you.

Actually, it tricks you into clicking on a site that you never really intended to visit

and then hanging out there. Once you do

get there, think about Instagram, for example, or Facebook. You may scroll for minutes and minutes,

but then suddenly it's hours and hours. You get so lost being on this website that you completely

forget why you even were there in the first place. In the tech industry, there's a term for this.

It's called dark patterns. These are really dangerous rabbit trails that can lead you into a hole.

They just suck you in. And web designers and tech companies, they are using them more than you might even imagine.

They need you to click, to scroll, to hunt, to engage, to buy, so that this way you stay on their site, no one else's site, and they make money.

There is actually an acronym that explains all this. You may see it written up online somewhere.

They call themselves UX engineers and

UX firms. U.S. stands

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