![]() ![]() The early chapters of the book cover the history of our understanding of addiction, noting the important distinction between substance addiction and behavioral addiction. ![]() ![]() As described by a “design ethicist” whom Alter quotes on page 3, the problem isn't that social media users and video gamers lack willpower, but that “there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.” ![]() While addictive activities are nothing new, Alter finds that they are now becoming more and more ubiquitous, if not inescapable altogether. In Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, Adam Alter, a professor of marketing at New York University, combines traditional business and psychology research with an investigation of modern addiction engineering. User addiction is sometimes accidental but there is growing evidence that designers have learned to engineer and manipulate it. Scientists are discovering that social media, video games, and other online platforms have been designed to make them addictive, to the point at which privacy and other scruples are forgotten. Now that governments are finally investigating the use of personal data by online behemoths like Facebook, the time is nigh for evaluating how such companies have convinced billions of people to hand over their personal data voluntarily. ![]()
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