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Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Unavailable
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Unavailable
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Audiobook8 hours

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction-an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. 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. 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.
 
In this revolutionary book, 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. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.
 
By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good-to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play-and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.

Adam Alter's previous book, Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave is available in paperback from Penguin.

Editor's Note

It’s time to power down…

Facebook and phone games are addicting, but it’s hard to see how much they’ve shifted our behavior personally and societally. Alter makes connections between drug addictions and tech ones, and provides advice on how to overcome constantly checking emails to form meaningful IRL relationships once again.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 7, 2017
ISBN9781524736156
Unavailable
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

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Reviews for Irresistible

Rating: 4.0160000704 out of 5 stars
4/5

125 ratings9 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I won an early release pre-print of this in a Goodread giveaway!.....it was a very good read.... I'm going to pass it on to a computer software specialist because I know he'll enjoy the irony. Grab a copy when it comes out... you will too!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Really enjoyed the sections on game design and game theory and how those experiences have translated in to the devices and apps that we use on a daily basis.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very good at the beginning but it gets boring at the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was a super enjoyable, yet terrifying. Although, I did appreciate being enlightened to some of the tactics that tech giants are using to addict us.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very enlightening about what makes this new generation so dependent on useless things as social media and how new companies manage to keep this public hooked. I liked how the author compares old addictions and the ones we found today, also how what we may find not such a big deal has another intentions on the background (e.g. infinite scrolling)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A few good ideas about how to curb internet addiction, but particularly focused on video games, binge TV and fitbit. My problems lie elsewhere, so I couldnt relate. I am nearly 50 and the author must be 20-30 something. I liked Nicholas Carr, The Shallow Better. It got more into the psychology of what technology is doing to our brains. Adam does tell us our brains are being pickled like cucumbers. He also says we are condtioned to want feedback from sound and lights ar an early age. The kid who presses all the buttons on the elevator was a great example of feedback. I can see the same kid feeding money into a slot machine 20 years later.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great book with a lot of advices to implement on every day life
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This had some interesting parts but got a little repetitive making the same point over and over again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    fun read. author does a good job at presenting various studies and opinions to let you decide what the takeaway is. its catches a good snapshot of our relationship with technology today

    1 person found this helpful