BOOKS: Our age of addictive technology – Wicked Local Kingston

Tim WuSpecial To The Washington Post

Thirty years ago, we accepted secondhand smoke, sugary sodas for kids and tanning salons as simple facts of life.

What will we think is crazy 30 years from now? That we lived without enough sleep? Treated animals so badly?

If psychologist and marketing professor Adam Alter is right, another answer may be our use of addictive technologies.

In his new book, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked" he says we have casually let ourselves become hooked in a manner not unlike Victorians quaffing cocaine and opium, thinking it no big deal.

We, like them, are surprised at the consequences.

Alter includes not just the more obvious addictive technologies such as slot machines and video games, but social media, dating apps, online shopping and other binge-inducing programs.

Anything, he says, can be addictive - it comes down to its role in your life.

If your actions "come to fulfill a deep need, you can't do without them, and you begin to pursue them while neglecting other aspects of your life, then you've developed a behavioral addiction."

He points out, however, that many behavioral addictions aren't medical matters requiring treatment.

In earlier days, inventions such as the internal-combustion engine, the zipper, bicycle or calculator weren't intended solely to create some kind of habit in their users. They were about progress, creating comfort or efficiency.

But today, a large number of the products emerging from the world's mightiest tech firms are geared toward getting people to do things they might not otherwise do.

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," scientist Jeff Hammerbacher once said. "That sucks."

Companies are moving away from creating rewarding technologies for human enhancement - such as the calculator or the bicycle - and toward technologies meant to lure people to devote large amounts of time and attention to them - think Facebook or BuzzFeed.

Should you try to avoid all behavioral addictions, or just the more technologically rigged ones?

After all, many of life's greatest passions and satisfactions are rewarding and somewhat addictive - surfing or collecting antiques, for instance. Satisfying work can be addictive, as well.

In Alter's estimation, any of these could become dangerous addictions if one loses the "ability to choose freely whether to stop or continue the behavior" and experiences "adverse consequences" in life.

He draws on the words of design ethicist Tristan Harris, who contends that the problem isn't a lack of willpower.

Rather, Harris says, "there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have."

Outmatched, it is clear we need to draw hard lines - like quitting social media and not using devices in the home - as opposed to trying to fight temptation in the moment.

Alter pushes for long-term cultural change and a reprogramming of our lives to create spaces that are free from addictive technology.

I'd take it slightly further. Within the tech world itself, we need to designate the deliberate engineering of addiction as an unethical practice.

More broadly, we need to get back to rewarding firms that build technologies that augment humanity and help us do what we want, as opposed to taking our time for themselves.

As the examples of secondary smoke or opium suggest, we are capable of eventually learning from our mistakes.

My hope is that we'll look back at this as the era when high tech hit rock bottom - and we began to take a hard look at how we could do better.

Wu is the author of "The Attention Merchants" and a professor at Columbia University Law School.

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BOOKS: Our age of addictive technology - Wicked Local Kingston