irresistible rise of addictive technology

in Psychology from Princeton University, where he held the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Dissertation Fellowship and a Fellowship in the Woodrow Wilson Society of Scholars.

He has shared his ideas at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and with dozens of companies around the world.Īlter received his Bachelor of Science (Honors Class 1, University Medal) in Psychology from the University of New South Wales and his M.A. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.īy 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.Īdam Alter is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and the author of Drunk Tank Pink, a New York Times bestseller about the forces that shape how we think, feel, and behave, and Irresistible, a book about the rise of tech addiction and what we should do about it.Īlter was recently included in the Poets and Quants “40 Most Outstanding Business School Professors under 40 in the World,” and has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Wired, Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. 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. 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.

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. Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction-an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior.

Irresistible rise of addictive technology