UX Journey

Human Downgrading, one of the Center for Humane Technology’s core ideas, links a wide range of societal ills to the extractive attention economy, which is the root cause of all of them. Modern digital platforms, rather than giving us power, undermine our human skills, such as our ability to focus, our mental health, our critical thinking, our relationships, our participation in society, our democracy, and so on.

In public presentations and professional testimony before the US Congress, Tristan Harris and CHT stress that these damages are not isolated but rather systematic and reinforcing, creating a “dark cloud” that diminishes our overall human potential.

Some of the “Human Downgrading” framework’s important aspects are interconnected harms, system-level clarity, a call to action across all sectors, and a common narrative to bring about change. Unlike treatments that address problems like addiction, polarization, or disinformation independently, CHT demonstrates how harms are related and originate from the same root: technology that prioritizes capturing attention above all else. By giving the interconnected problem a name, CHT facilitates coordinated solutions. The terminology promotes cooperation between community development, education, policy, and design initiatives.

By incorporating human values into product design, designers are moving away from addictive mechanics and focusing on enhancing well-being. Tech employees use shared language to promote structural change inside the organization. Additionally, legislators want safeguards and inducements that would offset the extraction-driven current situation. Making a consistent story not only describes the issue, but it also fosters systemic change and collaboration.

By concentrating on Human Downgrading, we can move beyond individual symptoms, such as political fragmentation or social media addiction, and address the underlying economic models and designs that cause them. It facilitates collaboration across sectors in order to redesign technology in a way that improves rather than impairs human capabilities. The approach of CHT is not to give up on technology but to redesign it so that it supports human well-being rather than taking advantage of cognitive weaknesses. Their goal is to transform the ongoing “arms race for attention” into an “arms race for human benefit.”