“Every single day, we deliver more than 11 billion notifications and pop-ups into people’s lives. It’s insane.”
This is what Tristan Harris, former Google engineer and founder of the Center for Humane Technology, said while trying to make his colleagues understand where social media—and Silicon Valley as a whole—was taking humanity: not toward progress, but toward a slow, silent collapse of human attention.
In the race to capture attention in order to gain visibility, growth, and money, the outcome has been clear. Over the past decades, people’s ability to focus has dramatically declined. Apps and digital platforms have been deliberately designed to become increasingly engaging, with one primary goal: pulling time away from real life and keeping us in front of a screen for as long as possible.
And this did not happen by chance.
It was the result of conscious design. Not because these companies want to destroy humanity, but because they want our attention. Our time. In order to sell advertising, to profile us, and to make those messages ever more effective.
The average U.S. teenager sends or receives a message every six minutes. Their mind is constantly anchored to a smartphone, not to real life.
At some point, Tristan became deeply disturbed by this. He delivered a keynote explaining his perspective. Many colleagues agreed with him: we are not helping humanity—we are simply making money in an unethical way.
Shortly after, Tristan resigned.
Google later offered him a new role: ethical digital design. It seemed like the beginning of change. But every time he proposed concrete solutions, the answer was always the same: we can’t do that—it conflicts with our business goals and profitability.
The message was clear.
Silicon Valley does not want to destroy people’s minds. That destruction is merely a side effect of policies designed for financial and commercial success. Many agreed with Tristan, but they were unable to act accordingly.
The truth Tristan came to understand is simple and uncomfortable: we rarely decide freely. Incentives decide for us.
If your incentives are built around capturing attention, that is exactly what you will do.
More and more people within that industry began to think the same way.
Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of Facebook Growth, openly stated that the negative effects of social media are so severe that his own children are not allowed to use it.
Tony Fadell, one of the developers of the iPhone, admitted: “I’m afraid we’ve built something like a nuclear bomb for people’s brains.”
James Williams, former senior strategist at Google, once asked during a conference: “Who wants to live in the world you are building?”
Silence filled the room. Eyes dropped. No hands were raised.
And, as Tristan said, the worst part is this: every day, the system has incentives to get worse.
Incentives shape human behavior.
Most of us know how to behave.
Most of us know what is ethical.
And yet, being ethical today is extremely difficult in many fields. Dentistry included.
This is where the parallel becomes unavoidable.
We, too, work within a system of incentives.
A system not designed to serve people’s well-being, but to optimize volume, speed, and revenue.
Just as digital platforms are not designed to protect attention, modern dentistry is not designed to protect teeth.
It is designed to replace them.
We constantly talk about prevention, yet we make money by replacing teeth with implants. More replacements mean more profit. There are minimal incentives to save teeth or invest seriously in prevention, while enormous financial incentives exist for full-arch implant rehabilitations.
Just look at the dental tourism model across Europe—Albania, Bulgaria, and beyond. A significant portion of their profit is built on full-arch implant dentistry.
But the saddest reality is this: everywhere, we see dentists extracting teeth too easily. Teeth that could often be restored.
Under the promise of “fast and fixed,” we free people from their natural teeth and replace them with six implants and a screwed prosthesis.
Implants are our incentives.
Fast money.
Often easier money.
The allure of being a surgeon.
The appeal of digital planning and guided surgery.
The pressure from companies.
The glamour of the stage—because implant-related conferences are often the most luxurious ones.
We have many incentives—and sadly, almost all of them push us in the same direction.
Most of us would never treat our children or our relatives the way our profession, on average, treats patients.
And the problem goes even deeper.
In many branches of dentistry, profitability is low—or even negative. Despite charging 30% more than the local average for oral hygiene, that department is still not profitable. In practice, I am paying to do prevention.
Despite charging nearly double the average for restorative dentistry, I still could not live comfortably without giving up some elements that are part of my clinical life : a dedicated assistant always at my side, another assistant fully focused on sterilization protocols, a full-time secretary managing calls and administration.
We must look at reality honestly.
Dentistry, as a system, was not designed to support good ethic dentistry.
This is our inheritance from the past.
But this inheritance was created by humans—and only humans can change it.
Is it easy? Absolutely not.
Is it worth it? Absolutely yes.
As James Baldwin wrote:
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”