Instagram, like so many other social media platforms, is bottomless.If app designers can coax people to spend more time and money on a smartphone game, perhaps policy experts can also encourage people to save more for retirement or donate to more charities. Irresistible traces the rise of addictive behaviors, examining where they begin, who designs them, the psychological tricks that make them so compelling, and how to minimize dangerous behavioral addiction as well as harnessing the same science for beneficial ends. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.
We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos we work longer hours each year and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. In Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today’s products are irresistible. I found the book paradigm-shifting, just the way I felt after reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. From Social Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to Addictive Games such as World of Warcraft to Flappy Bird. Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter is a very great book about how most of the technology products we use daily are irresistible and invariably addictive.
Today, unfortunately, many tech developments do promote addiction. Apps and platforms can be designed to promote rich social connections or, like cigarettes, they can be designed to addict.
Tech isn’t morally good or bad until it’s wielded by the corporations that fashion it for mass consumption.
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