Teenagers could be more susceptible to online “dark patterns”
“Dark patterns” are everywhere on the web. These are design tricks that manipulate users in some way and prompt them to give up information, money or just more of their time. A recent study from the Federal Trade Commission found three-quarters of all subscription apps and websites use at least one dark pattern, and a majority use multiple such tricks.
Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Yanely Espinal, who covered the topic in this week’s episode of “Financially Inclined.” She said some common dark patterns include advertising that doesn’t look like advertising, online forms that come with check boxes pre-selected and something called confirm shaming. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Yanely Espinal: So this one example I’ll give you where I’ve been online trying to buy something, like, maybe it’s a flight I’m taking or I’m booking something, and it’ll say, “Do you want to add insurance to your booking?” “And I’m like, “no, I’m OK. No, I don’t want it.” And then the only way I can click no is if I select “No, I’m a moron.” Why would I want to click that? But at the same time, if I don’t click it, then I’m gonna click yes, I want it, but I don’t want to pay for it. And it’s so frustrating because they make you feel bad when you don’t add things that cost extra money to your cart. And that’s because they want you to pause, and they want you to maybe change your mind and give them some of your money.
Meghan McCarty Carino: So I would imagine we all sort of encounter these things all the time on the internet. Are there people that are particularly at risk here?
Espinal: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, I think the most common places where you find dark patterns are going to be shopping online, using social media — and here’s a big one for younger generations — gaming apps. Kids nowadays I see playing gaming apps all the time, on the phone, on the iPad, and like, “I want more swag bucks, Mommy. Buy me some more of these so I could get myself a new skin in this game.” You know, all of that, the back end of it is designed in a way to get you to play longer, to get you to buy more coins or put in more money to this app. And I think that’s the tricky thing, is like, we think this being tricked online thing is not really [aimed at] younger people, but it really is. It’s on the kinds of places that we, as younger generations, and especially kids and teens — so this next generation — is already spending a bunch of their time online. And so they are very likely gonna encounter these dark patterns.
McCarty Carino: So do teens need to be more mindful and maybe more educated about this stuff?
Espinal: Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, you start thinking about how important it is as a teenager to really evaluate how you’re spending money and how you’re making choices online. It’s even more important when you consider the fact that technology changes at a rapid pace, and, like, these dark patterns are getting stronger and better, and that makes us weaker, because we have to work harder to fight against it. And then the other piece about it is not just that it’s on us. It’s lawmakers. They can’t keep up with these fast-paced changes, and so I think it’s even more important for teenagers nowadays to protect themselves online and protect their money, because the laws aren’t always going to really be able to keep up at the same rate as these dark patterns are popping up.
McCarty Carino: So what can all of us do to resist dark patterns? It just seems like they’re hitting us from every side, they’re innovating. Are they, you know, just impossible to avoid?
Espinal: Yeah, I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. I don’t think it’s horrible, you’re never gonna be able to avoid them. But you’re gonna see them a bunch. And I think the key here is to understand what’s happening. So, like, educate yourself as much as you can, and the language around it is also really important, because when you’re talking about a topic, it’s intimidating when you don’t know the words and the vocabulary around that topic, and it makes you feel like, “Oh, I don’t know about this. I’m not going to talk about it because I don’t want to sound dumb.” And it’s like, no. When you learn the words around it, you can talk about it with more confidence.
But even if you don’t know all the fancy terminology being used in the tech space, you know what’s happening. You’ve seen it come up on your phone. You’ve seen it on social media and in these apps that we all use and when we’re shopping online, and so why don’t we, like, lean in and learn some of the terms they’re using? Because then the next time that it happens to us, we can actually pinpoint it, like, “Oh, OK, here’s that confirm shaming thing. They’re trying to make me feel bad. I’m not gonna fall for it, you know, I’m not gonna give them my money.” And that makes us feel like we’re prepared, we’re confident to call it out, and feel like we’re more able, I think, to fight back against it.
McCarty Carino: For young people online, who you say maybe particularly at risk of falling prey to this stuff, what are the stakes?
Espinal: For me, the biggest one is your money. I think probably other people would disagree and say, like, “No, it’s your time and your attention,” because when you’re young, you know, you don’t have a lot of money. So what you do have is time and attention, which, I mean, if you could waste a lot of time just scrolling, right, like, one of the [dark patterns] that we learned about in our conversation was infinite scroll, where you can just scroll, scroll, scroll, and three hours later, you’re just like, “Where did half of my day go?” Because I’ve just been scrolling nonstop.” And yeah, of course, time feels like a precious loss, but to me, when we’re thinking in the context of financial education, which is a lot of the work that I do, it’s so hard to save. They make it easy, so easy to spend your money, And they make it so easy to buy things, and the allure of, like, getting something in the mail, or seeing an influencer that you really like promoting something. Now you want it too. And that allure is so strong.
But the allure of saving money and opening a high-yield savings account, or figuring out how to open a Roth IRA or a brokerage account, the allure isn’t really there. That’s not really hot, that’s not really sexy. And so I think this is why it makes it so tricky and so tough. It’s like, it’s very easy, and it’s only going to be getting easier with more of these dark and deceptive patterns, to spend and waste money. And so it’s just going to make it harder for us to save, and to save for big, big goals that we might have, or even just small goals. It doesn’t have to be a big old thing like a car or a house. It could just be something small that you want, but you’re making it harder to reach those small goals every time that you use your money in other ways that you maybe didn’t intend to spend that money that way when you woke up this morning, but you got caught up in a dark pattern.
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