Are you spending too much time on your devices? What’s Irresistible by Adam Alter about?
In Irresistible, Adam Alter discusses the rise of technology addiction and how you can identify it. To counteract this, he suggests several techniques for combating technology addiction and fostering a healthier relationship with digital devices.
Read below for a brief overview of Irresistible.
Overview of Irresistible by Adam Alter
Do you spend too much time on your phone or computer? You’re not alone. It’s common to struggle with excessive technology use—many people even have a behavioral addiction to technology. In Irresistible, Adam Alter explores how the design of smartphones, social media platforms, video games, and other digital technologies exploit psychological vulnerabilities to keep users hooked—and what you can do to regain control.
Alter is a psychologist and marketing professor at New York University. He’s also the author of Anatomy of a Breakthrough, which explores progress and personal growth, and Drunk Tank Pink (2014), which describes how your environment can affect your decision-making.
Technology Addictions Are on the Rise
Alter argues that as of 2017, over 40% of people displayed symptoms of behavioral addiction to various forms of technology, ranging from common devices like smartphones to more niche technologies like high-tech eyeglasses—and he says that this number is bound to increase.
In this section, we’ll explain what a behavioral addiction is and explore both the symptoms and effects of technology addiction.
What Is Technology Addiction?
A behavioral addiction is something you can’t stop doing even though it does more harm than good, usually because you pursue it to the exclusion of your needs. Alter says that if you have a behavioral addiction to technology (we’ll call this a “technology addiction” going forward), you use technology so much that it interferes with your ability to lead a healthy life. For example, if you’re addicted to social media, you might be glued to it when you should be working, eating, sleeping, or being social. Prioritizing social media over other parts of life might be OK every once in a while, but when it becomes habitual, it has cumulative negative effects on your well-being.
Technology addiction is a controversial concept, as some experts believe addiction requires the use of mind-altering substances. However, Alter explains that our understanding of addiction has evolved: Humans have always used and become addicted to naturally occurring substances, like the nicotine inside tobacco plants. But we only began to understand substance addiction after early pharmacologists developed powerful drugs like cocaine. Experts promoted those drugs, leading to widespread substance addiction, until they began to observe addiction’s negative effects in the late 1800s. Alter says that emerging technologies are being adopted at an equally rapid pace, and we’re just beginning to learn that they can be addictive, too.
Three Mechanisms of Addiction
Despite the controversy surrounding technology addiction, Alter argues that on a neuropsychological level, technology can be as addictive as any substance. He explains that according to decades of studies on both animals and people, both substance addictions and behavioral addictions are facilitated by three mechanisms—and he suggests that technology addiction functions in much the same way. Let’s explore those three mechanisms:
We’ll call the first mechanism the pleasure cycle. First, the substance or behavior produces a rush of dopamine, a neurochemical that creates the sensation of pleasure (also known as a high). This rush of dopamine is so large that it disrupts your brain’s normal balance of dopamine. As you continue using the substance or engaging in the behavior, you develop a tolerance—you produce less dopamine with each occasion, so you need more of the substance or behavior to recreate your first high. In between those occasions, your brain produces very little dopamine; this causes you to feel very low, which can be difficult to cope with.
The pleasure cycle is the physiological basis of addiction. The second mechanism, which we’ll call emotional vulnerability, is the psychological basis of addiction—you need both bases to be truly addicted to something. Alter explains that humans are wired to seek external comforts that produce dopamine when we experience emotional stress—for example, you might vent to a friend or go for a run. People with addictions are emotionally vulnerable because they don’t develop healthy coping mechanisms. Instead, they turn to substances or unhealthy behaviors for a comforting dose of pleasure (dopamine). With repeated use, addicted persons teach themselves a lasting lesson—that the substance or behavior soothes emotional distress.
The third mechanism of addiction is memory. Alter says that if someone finds pleasure and emotional comfort in a substance or behavior, they’ll form strong, positive, subconscious memories of the object of addiction. So long as reminders of how it’s helped them persist, they’ll continue seeking it out, even if they understand it’s not good for them and want to stop. These positive memories can trigger deeply entrenched cravings and override their rational intentions to abstain. For example, someone who enters a rehab facility might lose the desire to use marijuana but relapse when they return home and see their bong.
What Do Technology Addictions Look Like?
Substance addictions can be relatively easy to spot—if you continually use an addictive substance, you’re likely addicted to it. But how do you know whether you have a technology addiction? Alter describes two kinds of signs that suggest someone has a technology addiction—behavioral symptoms and distressing effects. Let’s explore each.
Behavioral Symptoms of Technology Addiction
According to Alter, some of the symptoms of technology addiction include:
- A digitalized social life: Your most important social interactions might occur online because that’s most comfortable for you. For example, Alter explains that some young people prefer digital conflict over face-to-face conflict.
- Constant use of or proximity to the device or platform: You might compulsively check your texts dozens of times an hour, spend hours per day on your phone, and then sleep next to it.
- Dissociation from physical reality and attunement to virtual reality: You’re so engrossed in technology, you don’t notice real-life problems. You might ignore a cue like hunger to keep playing a video game.
Distressing Effects of Technology Addiction
Recall that definitionally speaking, you’re only addicted to something if your engagement with that substance or behavior harms you more than it helps you. Here are some of the harms of technology addiction that Alter lists:
- Isolation: If most of your social life happens online, you lack the face-to-face interaction that is needed to keep loneliness (and consequently, depression and anxiety) at bay.
- Poor social skills: The more isolated you are, the less practice you have developing social skills like empathy and effective communication.
- Poor sleep: Using your phone or laptop late into the night prevents you from sleeping well because the light it emits disrupts your brain’s natural sleep-wake cycle.
- Reduced capacity for attention: The compulsion to use technology interrupts other activities, resulting in distractedness and the inability to focus for long periods.
- Overall life dissatisfaction: If your technology addiction cuts into family time, worsens your work performance, or creates physical health problems, you may be generally unhappy with your life.
What Makes Technology Addictive?
Now that you understand what technology addiction is, we’ll explain why technology can be addictive. Alter focuses on video games and social media, but he emphasizes that mobile devices and wearable technology amplify the addictive potential of technology, since they make it possible to engage in addictive behaviors no matter where you are—at work or school, at home, and even on vacation. He identifies four common strategies technology developers use to capture and keep your time, attention, and money; let’s explore those now.
Technology Can Feel as Fun as Gambling
Alter explains that some technology is designed to exploit the same psychological vulnerabilities as gambling, another behavioral addiction, to keep users engaged and coming back for more. He names four such design features: exciting audiovisual design, early hooks, variable rewards, and deceptive superiority to real life.
Exciting Audiovisual Design
Some gambling machines are designed to blare celebratory music and flash brilliant lights when a player wins. Alter explains that even if you suffer multiple losses in a row before a modest win, your brain is primed to interpret these audiovisual cues as a total victory—you feel like you’re winning big despite your net loss. This reinforces your desire to keep playing (and therefore to keep losing money to the gambling establishment). Alter says that video game designers use a similar principle to keep players hooked—they incorporate lively, entertaining audiovisual cues that make it easier for you to get engrossed in the game. But instead of losing money as you would in a casino, you lose a lot of time.
Early Hooks
Alter says that gambling establishments use early hooks to lure participants into the gambling cycle. Early hooks offer participants a chance to join at low personal risk while promising high rewards. For example, online casinos provide new users with free spins, enticing them to start playing without having to invest their own money. However, as users play, they become emotionally invested in the prospect of winning—this emotional investment drives them to continue playing even when the odds are against them or they’ve already suffered a net loss. Video game designers use the same strategy to incentivize players to sink their time, attention, and money into their games.
Alter explains that gambling and gaming developers use three kinds of hooks:
The simplicity hook: Games that use this hook, like Temple Run, are so easy and straightforward from the get-go that anyone can play them. Users gravitate toward them when they have a few moments to spare but find they spend much longer than they meant to on them.
The deceptive simplicity hook: These games seem easy at first but gradually introduce complexity—for example, by incrementally increasing the number of threats to your character’s survival, as in Don’t Starve. Since by the time you complete the easy levels you’re emotionally attached to the game, you’re incentivized to keep going no matter how much time and attention it costs.
The hidden pay-to-play hook: These games are free to download and play, but they incorporate mechanisms that encourage or require players to spend money to access valuable content, features, or advantages within the game. For example, The Sims Mobile (TSM) uses this hook—players are incentivized to spend money on virtual architecture, decor, and outfits.
Variable Rewards
Studies suggest that part of gambling’s appeal is not knowing whether you’ll win or lose. Uncertainty is thrilling—you produce much more dopamine when you’re surprised that you’ve won than when you expected to win. Alter argues that social media companies use this principle to drive engagement: You’re not sure what kinds of responses you’ll get from others when you make a social media post, so you’re driven to find out. Since everyone is driven to post and wait for responses, social media becomes an interactive ecosystem that’s difficult to pull away from.
Deceptive Superiority to Real Life
Alter explains that both gambling experiences and immersive technologies present a deceptively superior alternative to reality. Gamblers can easily fall victim to motivated perception, a psychological phenomenon where intense desire primes your brain to interpret the world in a way that aligns with your desires. As a result, gamblers irrationally believe they’re always about to win, even though they’re statistically likely to lose. Similarly, Alter says you might have an irrational belief that your social media use is a net positive when it’s not.
Another way that immersive technology can seem preferable to real life is that it makes the impossible possible. This is especially true for the expanding field of virtual reality (VR), where you can play games that transport you to fantastic worlds or have lifelike experiences with faraway friends, family, and coworkers. Alter says that experts are concerned about the effect VR might have on society over time—we might lose touch with the here and now in favor of virtual worlds or have opportunities to live out virtual experiences that are harmful, like exploitative sex or violence.
Technology Creates an Anticipation-Gratification Cycle
Alter explains that some technology is addictive because it induces a sense of anticipation—a thrilling sensation that captures your interest and stimulates dopamine release—that you feel compelled to gratify. The only way to gratify this anticipation is by engaging further in the technology—you have to log on or tune in to see what happens next. Often, once you do, the cycle starts over; as one source of anticipation is resolved, another piques your curiosity. This strategy is especially popular in forms of technology with narrative structure—Alter says it explains the popularity of the true crime genre, for instance—but developers use it in other ways too. For example, dating apps rely on the anticipation-gratification cycle to drive interactions between users.
Technology Facilitates Pseudo-Connection
Humans are inherently social—we care about what other people think of us because, evolutionarily speaking, their support improves our chances of survival. Alter suggests that much modern technology, from social media to video games and beyond, appeals to this aspect of the human psyche. You’re incentivized to project a likable image, so you use a filter on your selfies. You also want to know that others think in the same way that you do, so you seek validation from others’ reactions to your online presence. However, you want to feel unique, so you seek out disagreement as well. But if that disagreement is insulting—for example, in video game trash talk—you might feel wounded, which drives you to seek more reassurance online.
Online interactions can’t satisfy your inherent social needs. They’re pseudo-connections; they lack the characteristics that make real-life interactions meaningful and fulfilling. For example, you can’t make eye contact or pick up on behavioral cues like body language over text, so some ideas could get lost in translation. Furthermore, children who communicate with others primarily online may miss out on learning how to decipher those cues and sustain in-person conversations in the first place. Alter offers an example: Teenage boys whose primary social outlet is video games struggle to regulate their emotions and relate to others, which prevents them from forming intimate relationships and can contribute to pornography addiction.
Technology Encourages Relentless Personal Growth
Alter argues that some forms of technology are designed to encourage the doggedly relentless pursuit of personal growth. This comes in two forms: skill mastery and all-around perfectionism.
How to Counter Technology Addiction
Since technology can be so addictive, you might be tempted to avoid it, but for most people this is an impractical solution—countering technology addiction is a matter of learning how to live with it in a healthier way. Alter proposes three such methods; let’s explore each.
Harness Addictive Mechanisms for Good
Recall that Alter says we’re intrinsically vulnerable to addiction. He argues that with this in mind, tech developers can aim to create experiences that make healthy behaviors more habit-forming. This approach, called gamification, involves incorporating aspects of games into mundane activities. For example, you might let your kids earn points and rewards for doing chores. Studies suggest that gamification is effective because humans are prone to laziness—evolutionarily speaking, the less energy we expend to achieve our goals, the better—so an experience has to also be pleasurable to motivate us to engage with it. However, gamification has limitations; for example, if you gamified most aspects of life, you’d have a lower tolerance for boring necessities.
Address Individuals’ Addictions
Alter describes a few strategies individuals can use to mitigate or overcome their addictions to technology:
Rehabilitation: Rehab centers are beginning to offer services that specifically target technology addiction by removing addicts from triggering environments and providing them with tailored training and support. Alter says these programs are promising—early results indicate that many enrollees learn to manage their relationships with technology in a healthier way.
Harm reduction: According to Alter, harm reduction involves taking steps to minimize the negative effects of your technology use. For example, you might sign out of your work email on your phone so that you’re not tempted to check it when you’re at home or turn off social media notifications so that social media doesn’t distract you at work.
Habit replacement: Alter explains that it’s difficult to suppress your technology-centered thoughts and tendencies unless you contrive a new focus altogether. The best replacement is one that meets the same needs your addiction does (like recreation) but in a healthier way. For example, you might trade late-night scrolling for reading.
Behavioral design: Behavioral design is the act of purposefully creating an environment that influences people’s behavior in desired ways. Alter emphasizes several such approaches: One option is to separate yourself from technology (for example, by leaving your phone at home when you go for a walk). Another is to use rewards and punishments to moderate your behavior (for example, by setting limits on your technology use and paying yourself to achieve them.)
Protect the Next Generation From Addiction
Children and young people are especially vulnerable to addiction because they haven’t yet developed the adult capacity for self-control. Addiction can have worse consequences for children and adolescents, too, because it disrupts normal psychological development—Alter expresses concern that children who overuse technology may never learn appropriate social skills like empathy, for example. It’s also easier for youth to learn healthy technology behaviors from a young age than it is for them to overcome addiction as adults.
Alter also suggests that society must better meet children’s psychological needs, including their need for connection. Such societal changes would fortify children’s mental health, making them less vulnerable to addiction in the first place. If kids and teenagers don’t have satisfying real lives, they’ll turn to digital alternatives that seem more appealing.
