Ask anyone with a smartphone what Trivia Crack is. You will get a range of answers– addicting, time consuming, maybe stressful. But one thing is undisputed, Trivia Crack is undoubtedly addicting.

Spreading through the school like wildfire, it seems like over the course of two days everyone and his dog have Trivia Crack. It hosts a basic premise, the player spins the wheel and has the option to answer a question from one of six categories: Geography, History, Art, Science, Entertainment and Sports. If the player connects to facebook, he can play with all of his friends.

But what has made the app so addicting? In a Human Relations class, when making a list of stressors, one student named the app as one of his leading causes of stress. Looking from a psychological standpoint, it is simple as to why people can not seem to put the app down. When the player answers a question correctly, the app gives the player a “Ding!”– a pleasant noise– followed by the chance to answer another question. But when the player answers a question wrong, he receives a lower pitched negative noise, and his turn is ended. This is a technique called classical conditioning, which is the manipulation of behavior based upon the pairing of two subjects. The game pairs the players satisfaction with answering a question by associating a positive noise and opportunity. This encourages the player to play the game more and more in order to achieve that reward.

“I had to stop playing,” said senior Kate Dixon. “I let all my games time out. I would be playing my friends while they were right there next to me. I would play it on down time at work until my manager took my phone away.”

For some Trivia Crack can be truly addicting as it gives the player a sense of cleverness that he knows an arbitrary fact. Ultimately, it is just the latest app fad that will fade like its predecessors such as Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Candy Crush and Flow.