Giving Compass' Take:

• EdSurge interviews three experts about persuasive technology and the potentially harmful effects it could have on the education space. 

• Experts think that inventors creating persuasive technology need to be more transparent the designs and framework, especially if it becomes prevalent in the education sector. Why would this be potentially harmful to students? 

• Read about the positive side of society's tech addiction. 

The practice of intentionally guiding user behavior is known as "persuasive technology," and it’s making its way into our phones, our homes and our schools.

This week on the EdSurge On Air podcast, we talk with three experts who study persuasive tech, behavior design, and the ways that algorithms behind technology and search engines can leave damaging effects on society and further exacerbate social inequalities.

The best way to think about persuasive technology is to start with the iconic furniture store Ikea. Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen, an assistant professor of communication and psychology at Aalborg University in Denmark, says whenever she wants to kick-start a class discussion on persuasive design, she starts with examples of how that retailer guides its customers.

Burri Gram-Hansen: When you enter IKEA, there's always a big map of the Ikea store. It's usually blue, and it'll have yellow footprints or something on it. But the map is always made in a way that it seems like it's such a short walk. So they have all of these things going on in the store, and you just go with it. You don't see anyone running in the wrong direction in IKEA.

So Ikea isn't the only one doing this. Persuasive tech is already here, and it's only going to grow. The real question seems to be, how does that growth happen in a healthy and productive way?

Noble: The most important thing that I've learned from my own research is that investing more and more into private companies to provide the backbone and infrastructure for learning and for knowledge is probably a step in the wrong direction.

Someone is designing the technologies that might be persuading us, and those should be transparent. We should understand the ethical frameworks around those technologies.

Read the full article about persuasive technology by Jeffrey R. Young at EdSurge