Host irresisible the rise of Addictive Technology and the business of keeping us hooked of 39 adam alter. What is the clinical definition of addiction. Guest the clinical definition thats the Psychiatric Association is confined there are some small behaviors but it has been widening and experts believe it should apply to behaviors. In the short term is very appealing but we return to over and over again obsessively compulsively long term it turns out to be bad for us. It to be financial or social or physical. And they fall into the definition. Is technology addictive on the reverse side . Yes. To a large extent there is a lot that fits under that but there are other forms of technology we find irresistible. Most of those revolve around screens but not all of those. We dont know exactly the longterm effects but there are some signs and some evidence in the population at large that is hard to resist these experiences. You write that the age of behavioral addiction is still young but early signs point to a crisis. Guest yes. I think thats right we dont know what effect this has on children but there is of the evidence it is changing the way they empathize with other people to the extent they flourish socially and one of the reasons is many of our spending upwards four hours a day in front of screens but not just tv but also phones. In the way they learn to navigate the social universe may try things out and experiment and get feedback so if you steal a toy they quickly learn that is not a good idea. But you dont get that rapid feedback with interaction with other people on the screen you lose out some critical periods includes learning so as these kids are nine or 10 years old with the screen generation there emotionally stunted. There is a whole generation of people looking very different from every generation with that same exposure to social interaction. Host back to your book irresisible you save many refuse to communicate on the phone or facetoface. Guest thats right. There is a risk communicating facetoface or on the phone. You have a lot less risk and texting is one way but it could be any online communication. But there are not that many queues. If you think how mathematically precise communication is eliminate that risk but if you Say Something i think it is funny i can respond with the space lol or space lol with some exclamation point sir even we will even understand what i understand by my response is much harder to convey how funny that is in person you dont want to come off as sarcastic dealer for three seconds or one second there is a lot of new ones the way we communicate facetoface or by voice that is lost in texting and people have not learned how to cope with that risk so it is more threatening. Host adam alter the screens in phones and games of the designed to be addictive. Guest yes. Thinks so they are creating content understanding human psychology and the work with experts and they try to do everything we can so yes absolutely by design i dont think that is a term they reduce but this is the attention of the economy there is a war here with a lot of players so they are doing everything they can and a lot of them are succeeding with the different platforms are building overtime. But access to dave said that shows if you like this babies spend three minutes a day or to tweak it is 10 minutes a day. So those platforms. Host what are those features you refer to . A lot of the platforms that we use have removed those stopping clues in the 20th century most of the media had a natural break. Books have chapters newspapers have articles if you watch on television you wait one week for the next episode but on screen there is no end point the bottom lawlessness of feeds on twitter and Facebook Instagram is just like netflix when one ends the next one begins. Those mechanisms are to ensure they dont have the natural cute tell you to stop and you continue and that is what the platforms have found to measure in engagement they spend far more than other platforms building these steps to eradicate the stopping queues. That may be one of the most powerful and widespread attempts to keep bus engaged host one case study about irresisible is nintendo. Guest yes. Nintendo is one of the of games and has a lot of games that have got a lot of attention they are particularly good but i talk mostly about tetras that is difficult to resist as number of delegates the one of the things about tetris it is always slightly more difficult than durability and then it moves slowly and give you time to grapple with the mechanism but as you get better it becomes more difficult but ultimately you always lose when you just reach that level it is just out of reach and the games that do that to present a challenge tended to be much harder to resist and that is a bit built into a lot of games of nintendo whether by design the decider super mario brothers with the most popular games of all time basically built the game from the very first level you have to learn to investigate and explore it is hard to lose a life early on the senate gets progressively difficult. A lot of Game Developers thurgood to make sure that experience is the perfect zone a challenge not so easy it is boring and not so hard it is overwhelming. Host getting back to the addiction part is there a similarity or parallel of addiction to technology or gambling or drinking addiction. Guest yes. I think so. People talk about substance addiction in behavioral addiction obviously substance acts directly on the bodys physiological that isnt true of a behavior which makes it different but also by people having considered them capable of causing addictions but there is no good reason to rule of behaviors one reason is the brain. David you are addicted to a substance may be a greater extent interesting here when but a video game but the same response that youre heavily addicted the brain response is very similar. It is a red herring because the brain shows the same response with herewith but if your surgery with painkillers you may not develop the addiction by your brain looks like someone who does have an addiction. Whether substance or behavior universally there is a psychological deficit or depression that is designed to suit the needs. So you also mentioned gambling so a lot of those behaviors are the children of gambling of casinos that have been very successful making it difficult to resist that is where behavioral engineering began. That is probably true since the mid 20th century now they have learned the techniques that the casinos have used using the same mechanisms the same person that sits at the slot machine is built into a lot of the games as well. So there is a lot of overlap with that magnitude is much greater capacity but it is a continuum to release be capable to create that addiction. Host adam alter are their Treatment Centers for those who may have that technological addiction . There are. Not many but there are some with various forms of addiction obviously with gambling there is gamblers anonymous there is one in seattle in particular which treats young men who have addictions two games it is a small center doesnt treat the population at large but addiction doesnt have to be a critical issue but this is a widespread issue for your 50 percent according to the definition but only one or 5 percent of those people require that sort of treatment. So the magnitude of the problem is greater in other parts of the world so in east asia or china or japan to run like a military camp he seemed to have a much bigger problem to addiction in the united states. There are not many and the number is growing. Wheeler and on page number one steve jobs and not with his cats his kids have my pads with first became interested i notice that i was struggling to stop using the apps on my phone. Seven to get a sense of what they were doing was that true or was that a natural consequence of the platforms . I stumbled on an interview with steve jobs a journalist at the New York Times with a long conversation on the phone and at the end of the interview the journalist as a throwaway question said by the way your kids must love the idea after had just come out and jobs said something that became the basis of a story basically cleaning that a lot of tech experts dont let their kids to your phones. They are not allowed to use it. That is a lot of true of a lot of tax experts publicly they say theyre wonderful products but they will not let their kids near them there is the Waldorf School in Silicon Valley it only introduces screens at about eight grade. The only introduce them to teach them how to code. The interesting thing but 75 percent have parents that our executives in Silicon Valley but there in the tech world but decided to send their children to school that actively avoids technology i think that is a fascinating statistic. Host why do they have their children wait. Guest they say that we know the dangers of technology that allows a we have built special mechanisms but that is the sense that you get. If you are creating something you know, the dangers for those that will not be affected that is the sense that i get. It is in the isolated but a lot of tech giants who are very cautious and they themselves are very careful and restrained. Of turning to the experts going above and beyond obviously that is a cause for alarm doing their research with the rise of addictive behavior. You mentioned you were struggling with some apps on your own phone. What were issued. Guest . Was in was a series of games the found difficult to resist a was falling from the york to l. A. I was on the plane six hours just before it took off by started to play a game called two 04 eight a number strategy game aias somebody on the subway i had all sorts of idea would never do for the six hours, sleep, work and started to play the game i landed and i was still playing. The person to write said i dont think i have never seen anyone while away six hours so effectively prepare you never looked up and never notice the time. That happened frequently it was not unusual but the degree to that flight was unusual but a lot of people explain why is it time to the internet and we know that is true so the founder of moment interviewed people guess how long they thought they spend on average they underestimated by 50 percent said they do about an hour after really was three hours now a year later he said the average use of by phone is four hours per day which is an incredibly large chunk of time. Host day still played that game . No. I removed it from my phone. There are ways to get that but short of going cold turkey there is a much you can do eventually the interest does died out were not sure why that is most people with Substance Abuse even and treated overtime it tends to resolve itself unless they ultimately dont survive but something will replace that so the real thing to do whether substance or behavior is workout the psychological need for for me on the play i was bored and captive so any experience that gave me a burst of pleasure that the game did effectively and would fight hard to resist but if that underlying issue like clinical depression or the illness if you can treat those issues to some extent will subside. People get in the elevator and pulled up their phone because that threshold for boredom is low. Host you say in your book irresisible that we waste nine tenths of a work day checking email. Guest yes. Depending which consistent you consulted is extremely are moderately alarming. When the mail comes at the office recheck them within six seconds which would not be so damaging if we had very few are able to return to the task but within 06 seconds you take 20 minutes to return to your level of engagement previously of you were consciously checking email all day use been very little time in the zone of productivity because youre just distracted so there are ways to deal with this sort lot of companies if they release your emails at three times a day you can deal with them during that period before the rest of the day the Company Helps you to manage yourself to ensure they focus on the task rather than checking email it does improve the work we get done. Host you finding differences between men and women or boys and girls with use of technology and potential addiction . It cuts across demographics. Affecting 50 percent of the population it doesnt just affect one group men and women or young people or old people a lot of what is interesting is phones and devices have changed. Typically we thought of the murders as teenage boys playing the consul in their parents basement that is a stereotype but overtime with the release of games that travel with a small chunks throughout the day more older women are playing games and in 2014 the demographic constitutes the largest portion is middle age women which is surprising but it shows this is a human problem. Not confined to a particular demographic maybe young men play more but there is no inherent reason why younger or older should be more engaged so these addictions to cut across. Host what is your background . Do you have a clinical degree. Guest i have a ph. D. Social and cognitive psychology from princeton i do not have a clinical degree but talking about why these are addictive but that backward engineering about it becomes addictive by steady human judgment and Decision Making and what drives behavior so that is my expertise i interviewed dozens of experts because i am not a clinical psychologist my training is elsewhere and wanted to get a good since what was an issue with substance addiction after putting together those interviews i do think were dealing with a political issue the wide level of addiction for a large part of the population host our Software Developers learning bacon build the rewards and triggers part. Absolutely by looking at other companies someone by trial and error. They have the incredible amount of data to work through. They gave me these one version in one version of the mission and then if we tweak this is devastating someone you have to find a lost art of fact which one sees is more addictive . They will release one version two 1 2 and though fined up saving a person is more engaging than fighting the artefact so they will do away with that then they say this is sitting someone and if it is in a landscape with features they will release those separate versions so over time the weapon is version of that mission so by the 20th generation you played the most difficult to resist of that mission and that is what you can do if you have enough data to beta tape they detest that is what a lot of the companies are doing. Where the social media sites like Facebook Gore twitter or instagram 60 million photographs are uploaded of the databases have to do they fit into irresisible. Guest they play a huge role they are a big part of what we find so difficult to resist. All of those statistics in irresisible and wrote the book recently but they are out of date because the numbers rise so recently now there are 700 million so it is hard to keep track but a lot of the platforms are the most sophisticated and the most wealthy in very good. Part of it is that bottomless missed or the fact you keep returning the negative you never know we will find. That is what true with social media you dont know how people will respond if you go to twitter you dont know what you will find. People return to their phones to check emails to see if there are messages or social media again because of that uncertainty there our platform set to use specific mechanisms like snap chat how many days in a row they have communicated so a streak is insidious because you lose more by letting it died. So youre engaged rises if it is 101,000 days what they will do the their traveling in dont have access they will ask a friend to lot again to send messages to make sure the street does not die. That is unjust because they enjoyed a platform but they are looking people that diminishes their wellbeing so think about a vacation to let a streak died rather than get away from wife and recharge that is a pretty good sign the platforms are not all positive. Host in the last chapter you say there are two ways to approach behavior to eliminate or harness them. Guest yes. We talked about the elimination the importance of trying to minimize the use of technology but one of the things i found interesting with research there are the same tools used occasionally more and more often for good children dont like brushing their teeth so there is a toothbrush tied to enact with a small character and as the children brush their teeth he jumps around they watch him and it is two minutes and they enjoy that. Dave brush properly this was so successful that before the first version they refuse to go this leap it would not stop now he goes to sleep after two minutes the jim shows how effective it can be. It is in the game to keep him jumping a lot of companies but a lot of that can be used for the good but the trick is is a slippery slope good in one instance may not be good in another it want to go to sleep but theyre so engaged but you can reduce these techniques for good to set goals to eat better or teach children and is a big part of successful teaching makes learning a game much more interesting the future and school into a game there naturally more interested that is one area we use these techniques it is beneficial. Host irresisible the rise of Addictive Technology and the business of keeping us hooked offer adam alter thanks for your time. Guest thanks for having me. [inaudible conversations]