Irresistible - BookWyrm

Hardcover, 354 pages

English language

Published March 7, 2017 by Penguin Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-59420-664-1
OCLC Number:: 952647441

(5 reviews)

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 …

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.

1 edition

stochita reviewed Irresistible by Adam Alter

Review of 'Irresistible' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Somewhere in between 2 - 3 stars. Picked up the book years ago but left it collect dust on my shelves after a failed attempt at reading it. The first part is worth reading, the mix of science with popular culture, explaining how addiction has been studied and evolved throughout the years is confirming some assumptions I had.

On the other hand, the second part is as boring as a corporate conversation during which people open up about their feelings and feel vulnerable. The author spread the explanation of addiction-inducing design elements over hundred of pages without any clear understanding of why that is necessary. We all know phones make us addicted, we all know the infinite scroll is there to keep us in the loop.

With those non-fiction books, the tone becomes predictable after a couple of pages in.