Why the Mobile Phone Is the New Supermarket?
The Supermarket: The Birth of Consumption Engineering
For centuries, food was organized around a simple logic: produce what you could, sell what was available, and eat what was at hand. Well into the nineteenth century, food was a local, seasonal, and manual affair. Production was artisanal or agricultural, sales took place in small shops or markets, and the consumer's choice was limited by availability. Individual judgment existed, but its scope for action was reduced: you did not choose between hundreds of products, but between very few.
This framework began to change at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when industrialization simultaneously altered three fundamental dimensions of food: production, selling, and choice. This shift not only reorganized consumption; it solved one of humanity's central historical problems: scarcity. For the first time, food could be mass-produced, preserved, transported, and distributed reliably to growing populations. The problem was no longer lack but managing abundance.
First, production changed. With industrialization, food ceased to be just cultivation and preparation and became manufacturing. New techniques in preservation, refining, transport, and standardization enabled the mass production of food, regardless of local context. The goal was no longer just to feed, but to feed urban populations steadily, cheaply, and repeatedly.
Second, selling changed. In 1916, in the United States, Clarence Saunders opened Piggly Wiggly, considered the first modern self-service store. In 1930, Michael J. Cullen opened King Kullen, the first fully developed supermarket, with large spaces, low prices, and visible abundance. From the 1930s—and especially after World War II—the model expanded massively in the US and then in Europe. The supermarket became the central device for food distribution in the twentieth century.
This change was not minor: the supermarket eliminated human intermediaries and placed the consumer directly in front of the product. It introduced self-service as the norm. For the first time, food choice became an individual, immediate, and repeated experience.
And here the third decisive change occurred: the way of choosing changed. When choice becomes self-service in a setting of abundance, the problem ceases to be food production and becomes capturing the consumer's decision. The supermarket did not just sell food; it organized attention. Products now compete not to be necessary, but to be chosen. Visibility, packaging, price, and taste started to be as important as the food itself.
It was in this context that consumption engineering emerged. From the mid-twentieth century, especially between the 1950s and 1970s, the food industry systematically relied on nutritional science, food chemistry, and marketing to answer a new question. It was no longer about which food is better, but which food is chosen most.
This shift had a decisive consequence. When choice was organized as mass self-service, repeated hundreds of times in silence by thousands of people, cultural and normative criteria lost real relevance. There was no longer transmission of habits, no community validation, nor time for collective reflection. In that context, the only criterion remaining was behavioral.
What mattered, then, was not what consumers said they preferred or what they “should” choose culturally, but how they effectively responded to the product: what they accepted without initial rejection, what they remembered, what they repeated. Focus thus shifted to the body, not as an organism to be nourished, but as a system capable of reliably responding to certain stimuli.
It was here that the industry began to notice something fundamental: there are components that consistently activate the human reward system, regardless of cultural context. Substances needing neither prior learning nor habituation, with consistent efficacy across audiences and markets. This was not yet a closed theory, but an empirical observation: certain sensory stimuli work better than others.
In this process, sugar took center stage for its capacity to generate immediate pleasure. It produced a fast response, reduced initial rejection, and facilitated product acceptance. Salt, meanwhile, intensified perception: it boosted flavors, made food “stand out,” increased sensory presence. Fats played a different but complementary role: they provided texture, prolonged satiety, and encouraged repeated consumption.
The combination of these elements did not result from a theoretical decision, but from gradual optimization. Over decades, the industry learned to adjust proportions, concentrations, and forms until producing products that required no effort to eat, were gratifying, and encouraged repeat purchase. Thus was born the ultra-processed food: not as a cultural deviation but as the logical result of applying behavioral performance criteria to food.
The direction taken by consumption engineering was not originally arbitrary or perverse. It followed a precise economic logic. When the supermarket turned food into self-service and abundance became the norm, the system organized itself around one dominant goal: maximize economic yield in an environment of massive competition.
Within this framework, nutritional, cultural, or ethical criteria did not disappear, but could not compete if the only variable was economic performance. Not because they lacked value, but because they did not produce an immediate, repeatable, and scalable response that translated directly into profit.
The only criterion that does so is behavioral. Because it allows near real-time observation of how the consumer responds to the product. What mattered, then, was behavior: what is chosen, what is repeated, what is abandoned, what sticks in memory. The product that wins, in this context, is not the best in absolute terms but the one that minimizes friction in choice, is accepted without prolonged deliberation, and provokes a quick response before conscious judgment intervenes.
From this perspective, orienting production toward certain stimuli was not an ideological decision but a functional consequence. The industry noted components that consistently and transversally activated responses. Substances that worked for all bodies, regardless of social, educational, or cultural context. They required no learning or adaptation: they operated directly on basic biological mechanisms.
Thus, sugar ensured immediate acceptance; salt intensified perception and boosted the product's sensory presence; fats prolonged the experience and encouraged repetition. The combination of these elements maximized a simple but decisive equation: frictionless choice, sustained consumption, and repeat purchase.
In this sense, the shift toward ultra-processed foods was not the result of malicious intent but the logical outcome of applying economic optimization criteria to a setting of massive self-service food. When success is measured in terms of immediate response and sustained repetition, the system learns—without making it explicit—which stimuli to favor to maximize profit.
This logic is self-reinforcing. The more these products are consumed, the more taste and metabolism adapt; and the more they adapt, the more effective intensified stimuli become. The system does not correct course because within its framework—always defined solely by economic performance—there is nothing to correct. It produces, sells, scales.
For much of the twentieth century, industrialized food was associated with progress: abundant, cheap, stable, and accessible food. Compared to the past's scarcity, excess did not appear to be a present problem. In this context, consumption engineering became consolidated as a solution, not a threat.
It was only toward the end of the twentieth century that a broader critical awareness began to emerge. People recognized that the food environment is not neutral, that choice is behaviorally studied and designed, and that there are sustained health effects. But recognizing the problem does not deactivate it. The architecture producing it remains intact.
The supermarket remains the central device. Self-service continues to organize choice. And consumption engineering keeps optimizing what guarantees immediate response, because the economic system sustaining it has not changed its logic: it has only added warnings.
Today we know the problem exists, but the economic model producing it remains unchanged. Warnings are added, without changing the benefit-maximizing logic. Responsibility is shifted to the individual, while the system keeps pushing in the same direction.
The Mobile Phone: The Consumption Engineering of Digital Ultra-Processed Products
At this point, one might have thought that the historical experience with food would have taught some lesson. After decades observing the effects of ultra-processed foods on health, humanity might have developed a threshold of caution against environments designed to eliminate friction and maximize behavioral responses. However, the reality is that consumption engineering remains intact, still works in the same way, and has become generalized as a principle.
In the food field, this engineering was only truly deployed when the supermarket—and later the shopping mall—introduced a decisive condition: massive self-service. Not because there was previously no interest in influencing choice, but because there was previously no environment capable of continuously, repeatedly, and directly organizing consumer attention. Consumption engineering does not create desire: it organizes how choice happens.
For decades, this logic remained limited to the consumption of material goods. Food, clothing, and objects could be arranged in a space and offered for self-service. Information, entertainment, and forms of social interaction, on the other hand, could not yet be organized in this way. Not for lack of interest in influencing them, but because there was no environment capable of offering them directly, continuously, and without mediation.
The twentieth-century media—newspapers, radio, cinema, television—distributed content, but did not create continuous self-service. They were bounded by times, rituals, and clear mediations: you consumed what was at hand, at the scheduled time, for a defined interval. Even the home computer, though offering interconnectivity, remained an episodic device: you had to sit down, turn it on, decide to use it. It was not woven into the continuity of everyday life.
What was missing, then, was not a new intention nor a different strategy, but a device that brought together, in fact, certain characteristics to make cognitive self-service possible. For the first time, the mobile phone brought these together: permanent portability, immediate access, minimal friction in choice, temporal continuity, and the ability to record user responses. Not because that was its original goal, but because that technical convergence made it possible.
The mobile phone became widespread at the end of the twentieth century, but only with the smartphone's consolidation—from the 2000s and especially since 2010—did this set of features stabilize. The phone ceased to be merely for occasional communication and became a permanent environment for accessing information, entertainment, and social interaction. It is always on, always near, always available. It does not occupy a specific place: it occupies time. There is no entry: you are already there.
As with the supermarket, the change is not only technological, but organizational. The mobile phone eliminates cultural intermediaries: editors, schedulers, schedules, explicit hierarchies. The user thinks they choose freely what to see, but do so within an environment carefully organized to maximize certain responses. No one tells the user what to think; they offer what to consume.
From here, consumption engineering finds an even more precise field of application than food. Attention is not only accessible but measurable in real time. The system sees which stimuli work and adjusts the environment continuously. Whereas in food the relationship between stimulus and response could only be known via aggregate, delayed data—sales volumes, periodic reports—in mobile use this relationship is recorded immediately, continuously, and at an individual level, for each gesture, pause, and minimal user decision.
The internal logic is identical to that which operated in the supermarket. The system does not optimize the truest, deepest, or most relevant content, but the content that minimizes friction in choice and provokes immediate response. The content consumed without much thought. The one that activates the body before judgment intervenes. At this point, digital equivalents of sugar, salt, and fat reappear, almost unchanged.
Cognitive sugar corresponds to immediate reward. It is the quick dopamine hit in the form of novelty, validation, surprise, or recognition. Short content, easily consumable, producing instant pleasure and quickly depleted, leaving a need to repeat. No context, continuity, or deep understanding is required: just provoke a response. Its function is not to sustain attention, but to capture it again and again.
Cognitive salt does not provide lasting pleasure, but intensifies the experience. It shows up as urgency, outrage, conflict, alarm, or confrontation. It does not make you like the content, but ensures it stands out, imposes itself among others, “makes itself noticed.” Keeps the body alert, heightens nervous system activation, and prevents disconnection.
Cognitive fats play a different role: they do not trigger or surprise, but sustain. They operate via repetition, familiarity, confirmation, and frictionless continuity. Autoplay, personalized feeds, chained recommendations, consumption routines. They do not generate emotional spikes, but prolong presence. They allow uninterrupted consumption.
As with food, the most effective content is that which combines these three elements: immediate reward to capture, activation to intensify, continuity to retain. Quick pleasure, constant stimulation, and prolonged presence define what may be called cognitive ultra-processed content.
None of this depends on any given culture, specific ideology, or particular social context. It works because it operates on universal biological mechanisms. The human reward system is not learned culturally; it is inherited. It responds similarly in all bodies, regardless of language, education, or tradition. That is why this engineering scales so rapidly and so well.
The mobile phone does not need to convince anyone of anything. It only needs to activate physiological responses that already exist. The success of this model is not due to idea manipulation but to exploiting biological regularities. Exactly as happened with sugar, salt, and fats.
The consequences of sustained exposure to this environment are not primarily ideological but cognitive and physiological. Constant activation of the reward system produces dopaminergic dysregulation, difficulty sustaining attention, intolerance to delay, and preference for immediate stimulus. Complex thought becomes costly and uninteresting. Silence is uncomfortable.
It is not that people are no longer able to think, but that consumption engineering trains other responses. Just as a palate accustomed to sugar, salt, and fats loses sensitivity to simpler flavors—even to signals of well-being—a mind trained by digital ultra-processed content loses tolerance for cognitive processes that do not provide immediate reward.
As with food, harm does not appear as a one-time event but as a drift. It is cumulative over time. It is not perceived as external harm, but as daily habit. The body and mind adapt first, with costs only becoming visible afterward. This is why it is so hard to identify the problem from inside. The system does not break: it works too well.
In the medium term, the first clear effect is an alteration of the reward system. Constant exposure to stimuli designed for rapid dopamine flattens the response: what once generated interest no longer does. The system needs more frequency, more intensity, or more novelty to produce the same effect. This does not lead to more enjoyment, but to greater dependence on the stimulus. The subject does not enjoy more; they need more not to feel empty.
This process has a direct correlate in attention. Sustained attention—the ability to remain with something without immediate reward—starts to weaken. It does not disappear, but becomes increasingly costly. Thought that requires continuity, delay, or effort begins to feel unnatural, even physically uncomfortable. Not because it is harder, but because it does not activate the reward circuit quickly enough. The mind learns, without instruction, to avoid it.
Alongside this is a baseline hyperactivation. Cognitive salt—urgency, conflict, alert—keeps the nervous system in a state of constant excitement. The body gets used to living at a level of activation once reserved for exceptional situations. The result is not energy but fatigue: irritability, difficulty resting, sleep problems, tiredness without a clear cause. The system cannot power down because it has learned always to stay switched on.
On a cognitive level, this dynamic favors an increasing preference for quick closure. Open questions, ambiguity, and nuance begin to feel uncomfortable. Not for ideological reasons, but physiological ones: they do not provide immediate reward. Thought tends toward quick conclusions, simple explanations, clear narratives.
From this comes a progressive externalization of criteria. The subject trusts less in their own internal process to decide what is interesting, relevant, or valuable. They need external signals: popularity, visibility, collective reaction. Judgment ceases to be an inward activity and becomes a reading of the environment. One does not think first and then contrast; one reacts, and if anything, rationalizes afterward.
In the long term, these effects not only persist but become entrenched as deeper transformations. One of the most significant is the erosion of cognitive initiative. Actively seeking, exploring the unknown, or sustaining long processes without immediate reward becomes less and less common. Not impossible, but exceptional. Mental behavior ceases to be organized as searching and becomes reactive: one responds to what appears instead of setting out on one’s own trajectory. Desire stops organizing behavior as seeking and only activates in response to immediate stimulus.
Over time, something more subtle and at once more serious emerges: a fatigue of meaning. Continuous exposure to intensified stimuli produces a kind of functional indifference: nothing really matters because everything is competing to matter right now. Emotional saturation generates not engagement but distance. The world becomes noisy and, paradoxically, flat.
Ultimately, this dynamic drastically reduces tolerance for uncertainty. Silence, waiting, and boredom—historically fertile ground for reflection—begin to be experienced as dysfunctions needing immediate correction by stimulus. The mobile phone ceases to be just for information or entertainment and starts to play a regulatory function: managing internal, physiological, cognitive, and emotional states.
None of this depends on a specific culture, education level, or particular ideology. These mechanisms work because they are anchored in biology. The human reward system responds in similar ways in any context. This is why cognitive consumption engineering is so effective and so hard to neutralize: it does not appeal to beliefs, but to reflexes.
As with food, the problem is not that the individual "chooses poorly." The problem is that the environment systematically trains certain responses and untrains others. And when that environment takes up several hours daily for years, the effect ceases to be anecdotal and becomes structural.
We are not facing a sudden loss of capacity, but a gradual reconfiguration of possibilities. The mind still functions but within an ever-narrower range of effective stimuli. Judgment does not disappear; it arrives late. When it shows up, the body has already responded.
Cognitive consumption engineering does not eliminate freedom; it shifts it to terrain where exercising it becomes ever more effortful. Just as a diet based on sugar, salt, and fat progressively weakens metabolism, an environment saturated with ultra-processed digital stimuli does not prevent thinking, but makes thinking less and less frequent and less likely.