Welcome to the era of behavioral addiction, also known as the era in which half of the United States population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge watch TV shows and movies on YouTube; We work longer hours each year and use our smartphones for an average of three hours a day.
Most of us would rather have a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they have a hard time interacting with real people.
Irresistible: the rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked [Download pdf Below]
In this groundbreaking book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at New York University, traces the origins of behavioral addiction and explains why so many of today’s products are difficult to resist. Alter’s research was published in the journal Nature.
Although these extraordinary objects can unite people around the world, their extraordinary and potentially harmful magnetism is no coincidence.
The corporations that design these products make incremental improvements to them over time, making it increasingly difficult for consumers to resist their appeal.
Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for good (improve the way we communicate with each other, spend and save money, and set boundaries between work and play) and how we can mitigate the most harmful effects these products have on our well-being. . -the human being, as well as the health and happiness of our children by reverse engineering behavioral addiction.