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301 reviews for:
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Adam Alter
3.7 AVERAGE
301 reviews for:
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Adam Alter
3.7 AVERAGE
I found this book very educational about addiction in general and specifically social media and tech gadgets addiction, which make the last one more money since we live in the era of capitalism of surveillance.
The book describes in detail (though some of it just boring stories) the mechanics used by social and video games to make us the consumers more hooked to their icrack and it’s effect on our life’s and the next generations life’s and abilities, and me personally find this book to be one of the most necessary reads to every future parents so they can determine what is healthy screen time, and to every individual want to be more productive with his time and life then being hooked to screen all day longe.
The book describes in detail (though some of it just boring stories) the mechanics used by social and video games to make us the consumers more hooked to their icrack and it’s effect on our life’s and the next generations life’s and abilities, and me personally find this book to be one of the most necessary reads to every future parents so they can determine what is healthy screen time, and to every individual want to be more productive with his time and life then being hooked to screen all day longe.
If you're reading this review, there is a good chance you display some level of behavioral addiction to the internet. If you got here by way of social media, well then you almost certainly are an addict. A book like Cal Newport's "Deep Work" will have you thinking that technology exists solely to distract. Adam Alter's "Irresistible" takes things to a different level. Technology is not just distracting. It's an intentionally designed addictive distraction. Much of what concerns Alter can be summarized in two stats: the average human attention span decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013 (Apparently, goldfish have a 9 second attention span) and 70% of recipients start reading corporate email within 6 seconds of its digital arrival. People crave novelty so much that they're even willing to seek it in their goddamn work email! Most of the behaviors that concern Alter have roots in smartphones and the easy access to addictive games and social media they provide. The pull of smartphones is so strong that their mere presence creates cognitive demand provoking distraction. Alter references a study showing lower level of engagement between talking strangers when smartphones were just lying, unused, on a table. Anecdotally, we teachers see this phenomenon in class as well. Students who put a smartphone next to their notebook come across as being less engaged that those who keep phones in their backpacks. Although he may stretch some behavioral studies beyond their original findings, Alter makes a strong and multifaceted case that our behavioral addiction to technology is real and getting much, much worse. Sorry, I need to end this review now. I have to check for likes on my last Facebook post.
Really long review mostly not about the book ahead:
I had really high expectations for this when I saw what it was about. I'm a teenager, and my generation is hooked on technology. I have a few friends whom I have never said more than 10 words to in person that I know better than my real friends. "hanging out" can mean spending hours sitting right next to each other, but be playing on our phones the entire time. If someone is telling me about something x said, they can talk for a solid 5 minutes before I realize that this all happened online. I've never been more than a period into school before I see someone checking their Snapchat. Many converations in the hallways are about what caption to use for a really good picture, how many "ha"s to reply to someone over snapchat, what to like on Instagram, when to post something, and the list goes so far on.
It's easy to say I'm not a part of it. I don't obsess over this and that. That's them, not me. It's not at all true though. I am an internet addict and I know it. I always know exactly where my phone is and I bet I spend 8-9 hours a day staring at screens. It's actually much better now than it was before. I'll elaborate.
When I was in 2nd grade I won an iPad. Pretty cool for me then. I didn't use it much though, because my dsi was also awesome to me. I racked up a total of 450+ game hours on one pokemon game alone from 2nd-3rd grade. That doesn't include the time I spent playing other games. I also had a ps2 which I would play about 3-4 hours everyday from 2nd-4th grade.
It's easy to say I was a kid, just having fun, which is fair, but this wasn't good. I remember playing outside as a chore my parents made me do. I didn't like it at all, and they had to tell me "stay out there for x amount of time" and those aren't fond memories. I understand now why they did it and I'm not saying they're right or wrong, but the fact is I was so hooked on my games I didn't want to face the real world.
In 5th grade I got my first iPhone, and this is where it gets rough. I downloaded three social media apps that would hook me for years. ifunny, YouTube, and Instagram. It wasn't bad yet, but those three apps took up all of my free time.
6th grade is where it gets really bad. Without fail, I would stay up until 12, 1, 2 in the morning on the internet. My grades were getting worse, I was worse at sports, angry, withdrawn so on and so forth. At lunch, I would sit with my friends and look at memes instead of talk. Why would I want to? It was the most entertaining.
That next year was the worst of all. I now began playing on my phone in class (I never got caught, but I'm sure I missed a lot), staying up until 3, refused to talk to anyone but one friend, and would skip homework for 15 more minutes on the internet. Some days I wouldn't eat to save time for the internet. This was me at my worse. I knew something was wrong, and as stupid as it sounds, it took me months to realize it.
I downloaded an app called moment and expected maybe an hour of phone use a day. In reality, I was pulling 6, 7, 8 hours on school days. Pretty pathetic, but I didn't do anything right away. I started in may by pulling back on little things. Lock your phone when you're not looking at it. Don't check social media more than once every 10 minutes. I was down to 3 hours.
That summer was awful. I was off my phone as much and onto xbox. I played videogames for 9 hours straight regularly. I'd wake up at 1pm and fall asleep at 4am very frequently. The people I played with were the only friends I had. I could spend days without talking to a person face to face. I hated this, but I was addicted. What was I gonna do? My parents stepped in and said no video games during the week in the school year. Thank goodness.
That first week was really really hard. All of my online friends texted me daily and I couldn't even talk to them. But I began using it less, and that was the key.
8th grade was much better because I used my phone much less. Now, a year later, I'm down to about 10 minutes every day. Considering the average person uses their phone 3+ hours, I'm abnormal. However, I'm still hooked. I still think about it routinely, and I still need some help.
That's why this appealed to me. How could this've happened? How do I fix it? I didn't get any solid answers really. A lot of things that relate to my issue, but nothing that explained precisely why or how this fixes anything. I'll look for another book that covers this same topic more fully because it's an interesting one that this one didn't explain well.
I had really high expectations for this when I saw what it was about. I'm a teenager, and my generation is hooked on technology. I have a few friends whom I have never said more than 10 words to in person that I know better than my real friends. "hanging out" can mean spending hours sitting right next to each other, but be playing on our phones the entire time. If someone is telling me about something x said, they can talk for a solid 5 minutes before I realize that this all happened online. I've never been more than a period into school before I see someone checking their Snapchat. Many converations in the hallways are about what caption to use for a really good picture, how many "ha"s to reply to someone over snapchat, what to like on Instagram, when to post something, and the list goes so far on.
It's easy to say I'm not a part of it. I don't obsess over this and that. That's them, not me. It's not at all true though. I am an internet addict and I know it. I always know exactly where my phone is and I bet I spend 8-9 hours a day staring at screens. It's actually much better now than it was before. I'll elaborate.
When I was in 2nd grade I won an iPad. Pretty cool for me then. I didn't use it much though, because my dsi was also awesome to me. I racked up a total of 450+ game hours on one pokemon game alone from 2nd-3rd grade. That doesn't include the time I spent playing other games. I also had a ps2 which I would play about 3-4 hours everyday from 2nd-4th grade.
It's easy to say I was a kid, just having fun, which is fair, but this wasn't good. I remember playing outside as a chore my parents made me do. I didn't like it at all, and they had to tell me "stay out there for x amount of time" and those aren't fond memories. I understand now why they did it and I'm not saying they're right or wrong, but the fact is I was so hooked on my games I didn't want to face the real world.
In 5th grade I got my first iPhone, and this is where it gets rough. I downloaded three social media apps that would hook me for years. ifunny, YouTube, and Instagram. It wasn't bad yet, but those three apps took up all of my free time.
6th grade is where it gets really bad. Without fail, I would stay up until 12, 1, 2 in the morning on the internet. My grades were getting worse, I was worse at sports, angry, withdrawn so on and so forth. At lunch, I would sit with my friends and look at memes instead of talk. Why would I want to? It was the most entertaining.
That next year was the worst of all. I now began playing on my phone in class (I never got caught, but I'm sure I missed a lot), staying up until 3, refused to talk to anyone but one friend, and would skip homework for 15 more minutes on the internet. Some days I wouldn't eat to save time for the internet. This was me at my worse. I knew something was wrong, and as stupid as it sounds, it took me months to realize it.
I downloaded an app called moment and expected maybe an hour of phone use a day. In reality, I was pulling 6, 7, 8 hours on school days. Pretty pathetic, but I didn't do anything right away. I started in may by pulling back on little things. Lock your phone when you're not looking at it. Don't check social media more than once every 10 minutes. I was down to 3 hours.
That summer was awful. I was off my phone as much and onto xbox. I played videogames for 9 hours straight regularly. I'd wake up at 1pm and fall asleep at 4am very frequently. The people I played with were the only friends I had. I could spend days without talking to a person face to face. I hated this, but I was addicted. What was I gonna do? My parents stepped in and said no video games during the week in the school year. Thank goodness.
That first week was really really hard. All of my online friends texted me daily and I couldn't even talk to them. But I began using it less, and that was the key.
8th grade was much better because I used my phone much less. Now, a year later, I'm down to about 10 minutes every day. Considering the average person uses their phone 3+ hours, I'm abnormal. However, I'm still hooked. I still think about it routinely, and I still need some help.
That's why this appealed to me. How could this've happened? How do I fix it? I didn't get any solid answers really. A lot of things that relate to my issue, but nothing that explained precisely why or how this fixes anything. I'll look for another book that covers this same topic more fully because it's an interesting one that this one didn't explain well.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
This had some interesting parts but got a little repetitive making the same point over and over again.
informative
reflective
fast-paced
The information is interesting, but I found the information to be so heteronormative that I was annoyed at times. Never knew computer usage was so tied to genitalia. Interesting to know what the usage of technology of non-binary people. Now, this book is from 2017, so maybe he can re-release an abridged more inclusive version in the future.