Why we rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone
We’re addicted. 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. You know the saying, we 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.
“Irresistible,” by Adam Alter, Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business. The book brilliantly illuminates the new obsessions that are controlling our lives, and then offers the tools we need to rescue our businesses, our families, and our sanity. It tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. It reads, “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.”
Adam Alter writes, “The people who create and refine tech, games, and interactive experiences are very good at what they do. They run thousands of tests with millions of users to learn which tweaks work and which ones don’t, with background colors, fonts, and audio tones maximize engagement and minimize frustration. As an experience evolve, it becomes an irresistible, weaponized version of the experience it once was. In 2004, Facebook was fun. In 2016, it’s addictive.”
He writes, “In late 2010, Jobs told New York Times journalist Nick Bilton that his children had never used the iPad. Bilton discovered that other tech giants imposed similar restrictions. Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired, enforced strict time limits on every device in his home, “because we have seen the dangers of technology first hand.” His five children were never allowed to use screens in their bedrooms. Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, bought hundreds of books for his two young sons, but refused to give them an iPad. Walter Isaacson, who ate dinner with the Jobs family while researching his biography of Steve Jobs, told Bilton that, “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.”
It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing, never get high on your own supply. This is unsettling. Why are the world’s greatest public technocrats also its greatest private technophobes? Can you imagine the outcry if religious leaders refused to let their children practice religion?
You should read “Irresistible” some day. It is a fascinating exploration and a much needed understanding of one of the most troubling and damaging phenomena of our times. If you care about your sanity, and your dearest ones.
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I need your help, please do me a personal favor.
I’ve started a Don Quixotesque crusade, ‘Read Something That Means Something’ (after The New Yorker slogan). Books. Authored by well-known, eminent, and trusted voices. Two hundred pedigreed books, carefully curated, one each day in an article here on LinkedIn. Books about quality skills, the kind that meet the needs of a paying market — only this kind will give us an edge and get us further. Skills that help shape us as better persons and professionals — better bosses, peers, lovers, parents, better citizens.
Two hundred books because we can’t compile intelligence from a single source. This is not intelligence, that’s an opinion. Therefore I think it’s nearly impossible for someone to not find something rewarding in this kind of Best Of series. Some good new skill to learn. Or a beneficial refresh. Or challenges for deeply rooted ways to think. And I think that’s good. I think that’s how evolution works, always revising what we thought we knew. I think that’s part of becoming.
So here’s the personal favor I’m asking for. While I’ll write daily about a book, I need you to check these articles from time to time. And share, so others may grow. Share and by doing so perhaps we can create a movement that matters.
I think books are trusted, inspiring friends. Sometimes, these friends mark a before and after in our lives. I think we shouldn’t let go of friends who make us a better person.
I need your help. Hit share. Thank you for being the reason I hope. Readable yours, C. Pitner
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Credit:
- “Read Something That Means Something” is The New Yorker
- Header photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash.
- ‘Don Quixote,’ a 1955 sketch by Pablo Picasso of the Spanish literary hero and his sidekick, Sancho Panza. Art Encounter.
- “Irresistible, The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked,” by Adam Alter, Penguin Books, Mar. 2017.
- "Irresistible," book 7-of-200 of this series, is cited in Chapter 14, “Silicon Valley, We Have a Problem” of “The Morning After.”