Author: Adam Alter

As a teacher, I’m on the front-line of what the proliferation of technology is doing to young people. While I’ve done my best to mitigate the classic old person looking down at younger generation and raising the banner that things are worse than they’ve ever been (after all, I teach some pretty amazing students), I am concerned.

Very concerned.

I see all the amazing things technology can do and how useful it can be in the classroom, but I still remember what it was like to be a teenager when some of this stuff was coming out. It was addictive.

Now I’m watching as students grow increasingly addicted to their devices, unable to let go and seeking a constant need to fill any gaps of boredom. Alter lets us in this rise in addiction wasn’t done by accident, but manufactured by teams of people who understand how addiction works and how to use it against us.

Immediately, we are told the heads of all these innovative tech companies do not allow devices in their home. Some send their kids to tech-free schools and even Steve Jobs severely limited his own kids screen time.

If you’re beginning to make a connection between the tobacco industry and the tech industry, you’re not far off.

A lot of this book is spent explaining how behavioral addiction works. If you’re not into endless waves of sociological observations and experiments (I did find it tiring), this book may be a tough slog.

However, there are many gems to pick up if you stick with the work. You gain an understanding of why we keep coming back to our devices, how tech companies use your weaknesses against you and ways to overcome the addiction.

It provided enough encouragement for me to back away from many of the mindless behaviours I commit to when looking at a screen, although I don’t know if I can attribute it directly to the author or from reading it elsewhere and seeing it again here. In any case, it motivated me to do something.

While I wish Alter could’ve spent more time directly addressing the issue (he does bounce around it quite a bit), if you’ve never traversed the new waters of technological addiction, this book wouldn’t be a bad place to start.