Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
Essay Assignment (Choose One):
Option 1:
In a 1,000-word essay, typed and double-spaced, support, defend, or complicate Adam Alter’s assertion that morally dubious, entrepreneurial technocrats are imposing addictive technologies on consumers and that these technologies have deficits that far outweigh their benefits. Be sure to use the Toulmin structure in which you include a counterargument-rebuttal section before your essay’s conclusion. You must include 3 credible sources in your Works Cited page.
Option 2:
In a 1,000 word essay, typed and double-spaced, develop an argumentative thesis that explains how Adam Alter's book informs the pathologies rendered in Andrew Sullivan's online essay, "I Used to be a Human Being." Be sure to use the Toulmin structure in which you include a counterargument-rebuttal section before your essay’s conclusion. You must include 3 credible sources in your Works Cited page.
Option 3:
A crucial life lesson is that we aren’t hard-wired to get hooked to the Internet and fragment our attention with social media and smartphone addiction. To do so is to be miserable knowing we wasted our life on nonsense. In contrast, we are hard-wired to have the humility and wisdom to know our time is limited and we must manage our time wisely working hard at tasks that are meaningful to us and that require great effort than should not be diminished by social media distractions and the like. Drawing from both Cal Newport’s Deep Work and Adam Alter’s Irresistible, develop an argumentative thesis that supports the above theme. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have 3 sources for your Works Cited.
Study Questions
One. How does “Never Get High on Your Own Supply” pertain to Steve Jobs?
Adam Alter is making the point that even as Steve Jobs wallowed in glory of making the greatest Internet device ever, the iPad, he refused to use one or let his children use one.
Likewise, other tech avatars refuse to let their children use iPads. They sent their kids to expensive private anti-technology Waldorf schools.
The point is that drug dealers stay strong and rich by not getting high on their own supply.
Alter asks a great question: Why are all the world’s greatest public technocrats also in private the world’s greatest technophobes?
Clearly, they know the dirt. They know the hell that is at the end of the iPad journey. They’ve seen the darkness, and they don’t want to go there. They don’t want their kids to go there.
But they want you and me to go there. They want our money. Their moral integrity is seriously lacking.
Alter is making the point that we might reconsider embracing technology made by people who have no moral integrity and who secondly wouldn’t privately use the gadgets they make so seductive to the rest of us.
Adler asks: Could you imagine the outcry if religious leaders didn’t let their children practice the religion they preach to you?
This book introduction is piece of rhetorical brilliance as it drives home the point that the technology that is being foisted upon us is by its very nature addictive. It’s not built to help us. It’s built to manipulate us. The technology makes money for its creators after all.
Video game designers avoid World of Warcraft.
An Instagram engineer admits Instagram is designed to send its users down a bottomless pit of addiction.
Smartwatches, Facebook and Netflix, like Instagram, are designed to maximize addiction and obsession.
The smartphone is an opium-drip gadget you carry around with you 24/7.
Two. Why can “normal” people succumb to addiction?
Because addiction is about immersion into environment and circumstance.
Steve Jobs and other successful technocrats know the secrets of addiction, and the addiction model is what fuels their designs.
Making irresistible tools to ensnare us is the formula for success in the crowded tech space.
Therefore, technocrats are in the addiction business.
“Design ethicist” Tristan Harris says even normal people with strong levels of willpower will succumb to addiction when “there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.”
New York Times journalist Nick Bolton, who doesn’t allow himself or his children to use an iPad, observes that the environment and circumstances for addiction in the digital age have no precedent in human history.
We can be snared by many digital hooks:
Porn
Online shopping
The list goes one until we’ve lost the very core of our being.
In the early 2000s, tech was slow and “clunky,” but now it’s fast. It has to be fast if it’s to have sufficient addictive powers.
Tech engineers do thousands of experiments to make the visual experience appealing and addictive. They’ve created a sort of digital Las Vegas to seduce us.
Newer and newer versions of these digital Las Vegas seductive machines keep coming out until they’re “weaponized.”
“In 2004, Facebook was fun. In 2016, it’s addictive.”
Behavioral psychologists say everyone has an addiction, even successful, educated people, and they learn to compartmentalize, which means be functional addicts, like the teacher who has $80,000 debt from online shopping.
Three. Is Adam Alter guilty of making an oversimplistic, paranoid anti-technology rant?
No, the concedes that technology has many virtues and advantages, and he has used tech to stay in touch with his family from Australia.
His book is not an anti-technology screed. He writes that technology is neither good nor bad until it’s designed for mass consumption.
Four. How our substance addictions and behavioral addictions similar?
Both stimulate the same area of the brain. But there’s a big difference. If you’re a speed or alcohol addict, you can do a lot to change your environment to avoid speed and alcohol.
But technology is different. It’s part of who we are, where we work, and how we connect with others. It is ubiquitous, meaning it is everywhere.
We can create boundaries and minimize digital addiction if we understand how behavioral addiction works.
Five. What 6 Ingredients does technology contain to create behavioral addictions?
One, it creates compelling goals just beyond our reach. We can never have enough likes or followers, for example.
Two, it gives us irresistible and unpredictable feedback.
Three, it creates a sense of incremental progress and improvement.
Four, it creates tasks that slowly become more difficult over time.
Five, it creates unresolved tensions that demand resolution.
Six, it provides a sense (delusion?) of strong social connection.
Six. What is the smartphone screen time average for people who use the app Moment because they are concerned about how much time they’re using their smartphones every day?
About 3 hours. We can infer that people who don’t use Moment are on a lot more. Not knowing how much we use something, and not wanting to know, contributes to behavioral addiction.
In the same way, food obsessives are asked to keep a food journal in which they write down everything they eat. This cuts down on eating.
Most smartphone users are addicts. They spend over a quarter of their life on the smartphone. And they don’t even know it.
Seven. What’s the difference between addiction and passion?
Addiction is deep attachment to an experience that is harmful and difficult to do without.
Addictions arise when a person can’t resist a behavior (compulsion), which, despite addressing a deep psychological need in the short-term, produces significant harm in the long-term.
Addictions bring promise of immediate award, or positive reinforcement.
Original use of the word addiction was in ancient Rome, and it meant a strong bond to something like slavery. So the first sense of the word addiction was to be enslaved to something.
Passion is different than addiction.
Passion is a strong drive for an activity that is important and valued as bringing meaning to one’s life. Because this passion is valued, it is worth the time and energy devoted to pursuing it.
Whereas we feel free to choose our passion, we are slaves to addiction, which is a form of compulsion.
Eight. How common are Internet-based behavioral addictions?
Internet Addiction Test (IAT)
The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) is the first Validated measure of Internet Addiction described in the IAT Manual to measure Internet use in terms of mild, moderate, to several levels of addiction.
For more information on using the IAT and building an Internet Addiction treatment program in your practice, visit RestoreRecovery.net for our comprehensive workbook and training programs.
Based upon the following five-point likert scale, select the response that best represents the frequency of the behavior described in the following 20-item questionnaire.
0 = Not Applicable
1 = Rarely
2 = Occasionally
3 = Frequently
4 = Often
5 = Always
- ___How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?
- ___How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?
- ___How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
- ___How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?
- ___How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?
- ___How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?
- ___How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?
- ___How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
- ___How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do online?
- ___How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?
- ___How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?
- ___How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?
- ___How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?
- ___How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?
- ___How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being online?
- ___How often do you find yourself saying “just a few more minutes” when online?
- ___How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?
- ___How often do you try to hide how long you’ve been online?
- ___How often do you choose to spend more time online over going out with others?
- ___How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back online?
After all the questions have been answered, add the numbers for each response to obtain a final score. The higher the score, the greater the level of addiction and creation of problems resultant from such Internet usage. The severity impairment index is as follows:
NONE 0 – 30 points
MILD 31- 49 points: You are an average online user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.
MODERATE 50 -79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.
SEVERE 80 – 100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.
Personal Score
I took the test and scored a 57, which is a low moderate addiction.
University Students
We see that 48% of university students suffer Internet addiction.
Worldwide, Internet addiction is about 40%.
Nine. What is the purpose of Alter’s long exposition on Freud’s research into cocaine?
Freud and others believed cocaine as safe. Coca-Cola sold cocaine to its consumers because cocaine was considered a safe and natural ingredient. We look back at this as foolishness because now we have a body of research that exposes the dangerous addictive forming nature of the drug.
In the same way, Alter wants us to see social media as early cocaine, something seen as safe or benign in the absence of massive research.
Alter’s book is one of the first comprehensive books about internet and social media addiction.
But we see evidence that tech gadgets are like cocaine. Psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair observes that many children see their parents as “Missing in Action” as these parents are lost zombies, their noses deep in the screens of their iPads even while they sit with their children at the dinner table.
Parents claim they love their children, but they are mentally absent and are back-seating their children in favor of their gadget addiction.
“Wait, honey, I have to check my phone.”
“Not yet, honey, I have to check this text.”
These common words evidence twisted priorities of a nation of addicts.
And what’s worse is this behavior seems normal because everyone does it.
Ten. What game-changing study radically altered our view of addiction?
In 1954, Olds and Milner discovered that stimulating the pleasure centers of rats’ brains made them addicts.
Before this experiment, it was believed that certain people had a predisposition to addiction.
But juxtaposing the Olds and Milner Study with Vietnam Vets (20% developed heroin addiction), we saw that addiction was based on environment and circumstance.
You could have a healthy “non-addict” disposition, but still be a victim of addiction if your brain’s pleasure centers were stimulated effectively.
Welcome to the Internet.
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