I don’t particularly like checking all of these apps because I know it would be more cognitively nourishing for me to read a book, have a conversation with someone IRL, or take a walk. One of Alter’s most salient points: There’s a difference between liking a behavior and wanting to do it. Someone who’s lonely, for instance, might turn to an immersive video game to build social connections. ![]() “The substance or behavior itself isn’t addictive until we learn to use it as a salve for our psychological troubles,” he writes. Behavioral addictions often seek to fill a particular emotional void, which makes it essential to disentangle the reasons why someone may reach for the device in the first place. He explores the history of addiction, unpacks the differences between behavioral and substance addictions, explains why we need to consider the benefits of addiction if we want to address it properly, and reveals how product designers use the weaknesses of human brains to their advantage.īut although many of the tech tools we use are designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities-providing, for instance, a variable reward structure, which create a kind of slot machine effect every time you open your device-it’s not just about the tech. In his book Irresistible, Adam Alter, assistant professor of marketing and psychology at New York University, reveals the powerful psychological underpinnings of the devices designed to keep our eyes glued and fingers swiping. The somewhat comforting answer: My willpower isn’t entirely to blame. What had I been doing for the last hour? Where was my self control? An hour later, I’d emerge from my possessed state a bleary-eyed zombie. One last sweep of my email accounts and any other app that could possibly be checked (is looking at Venmo really necessary?), and then I’d navigate to Facebook and Twitter on my Safari browser (I took the apps off my phone so I’d spend less time on them-#fail). But after I set the alarm, some other part of my consciousness would guide my fingers towards other apps as if I was navigating a Ouija board. ![]() ![]() I’d plan to spend 30 seconds setting my iPhone alarm and then get into bed to read (a paper book). It happened almost every night around 10 p.m.
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