Garry Jones

Garry Jones is a university academic, researcher and educator.

Qualifications: BEd (Education) · BA (Psychology & Philosophy) · PGDip Marketing · MBA · MRes

This interdisciplinary profile sits at the precise intersection of the forces shaping compulsive smartphone use: human psychology, persuasive design, platform economics, and behavioural learning.

He coined the term Thumbtrap to name a state most smartphone users recognise but have never had language for: the gap between deciding to stop scrolling and realising, minutes later, that your thumb never received the stop signal. The concept is not about weak willpower. It is about the deliberate combination of infinite scroll, variable reward schedules, and personalised algorithms. These design mechanisms, when combined can exploit universal human characteristics regardless of age.

The term was first publicly proposed on Urban Dictionary in early November 2025 and developed across Reddit communities from 4 November 2025, prior to the launch of the Research Series in January 2026.

His research agenda traces the Thumbtrap concept from its foundational definition through to its implications for parents, teenagers, and platform accountability. The series gained renewed relevance following the landmark March 2026 US jury finding that held Meta and Google negligent not for their content, but for the design architecture of their platforms. This is a legal verdict that validates the core Thumbtrap argument.

Thumbtrap.org is the canonical reference home for this ongoing research.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4569-7476

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Garry-Jones-2

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WqwKv6wAAAAJ&hl=en

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/garry-jones-a37b913a8

Medium: medium.com/@garry.jones

Substack: https://attentiontraps.substack.com/

X: https://x.com/ThumbTrapEffect

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/ThumbTrapEffect/