Silicon Valley giants such as Google and Facebook are using underhand tactics to get our brains hooked to our smartphones.
That's according to former Google product manager Tristan Harris, who claims technology companies are using techniques borrowed from casinos to get us addicted to checking our phones.
He said the widespread phenomenon is known as 'brain hacking' by computer programmers and warned that the methods are "destroying our kids" ability to focus'.
"They are shaping the thoughts and feelings and actions of people," he told CBS News.
"They are programming people. There’s a whole playbook of techniques that get used to get you using the product for as long as possible."
Harris said notification streams on smartphones and apps such as Facebook are designed to excite the brain in a similar way to slot machines.
"Every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see, 'What did I get?'. This is one way to hijack people’s minds and create a habit, to form a habit.
"What you do is you make it so when someone pulls a lever, sometimes they get a reward, an exciting reward.
"And it turns out that this design technique can be embedded inside of all these products."
He said this explains why apps allow users to slowly gather rewards over time.