[spectralflux]

I think its pretty damning for the guy who literally wrote the book on making tech products more addictive (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products) is telling us the technology isn't the problem, we just need to solve our inability to cope with our feelings. Sounds like an attempt to absolve guilt.

[donor20]

Huh?

People have been working on making things addictive / attention getting forever. Sugar? Caffeine? Video games? Back in the day plenty of drugs, including those sold by pharmacists.

Either you have agency or you don't. I for one very much like the idea of someone with some actual expertise in how addictive products are created talking about how to avoid the addiction.

If you don't want to read his stuff - don't. And if you wanted to avoid these issues, even before this book lots of others. One easy one - no TV at home. I don't watch any TV shoes. I don't play any video games. Not sure if that's in the book, but getting outside, getting exercise, sleeping, spending time with partner, no phones at the dinner table (or breakfast or lunch) etc go a long way to just being a bit more distraction free.

Agency means you can decide what you want to do with your day and your life.

To much of anti-addiction / behavior self improvement stuff comes across as just pablum.

[Viliam1234]

> Either you have agency or you don't.

Or maybe it's on a scale, where you can do various things to protect yourself, but those require time and energy which are not unlimited.

Things such as no TV -- I would also say no social networks on a phone, ever! -- are obviously good. It is easy to reduce a distraction of something if you can eliminate it from your life completely, without any significant cost. It's like, when you want to get rid of alcoholism, it is easier to avoid pubs completely, rather than trying to regulate how much you consume.

Problem is when you cannot avoid some situations completely. Turning off the internet, forever, would have a negative impact on many people's jobs. And there is a lot of distraction even on Stack Exchange -- if I am looking at an answer of a technical question, why is it also necessary to be notified about hot questions about movies, video games, politics, etc.? (On my home computer, I could install a blocker, but that already requires some skills that many people don't have. On my employer's computer, I am not even allowed to install browser plugins, for security reasons.)

It is an arms race. As people learn to turn off some forms of distraction, experts keep inventing more intrusive ones.

[abdullahkhalids]

Humans are social creatures. Maybe an adult in a secure place in life and do it, but teenagers require social validation from their peers, and watching the same TV shows or having the same phone are part of it.

And once you as a teen you have built up these distraction mechanisms in your life, it becomes harder to let go as an adult.

This is a society level problem, to some significant extent.

[Teichopsia]

The heroin dealer just opened up a rehab center.

[dorchadas]

That's exactly what the author did with his second book as well, not just this article. It's literally called Indistractable!

[saurik]

That, or he knows the trick of human psychology he is using to get people hooked and also knows how to make oneself immune? If you want to learn how not to get locked in a chokehold, you could certainly do worse than learning from someone who teaches people how to lock someone in a chokehold (though I appreciate there may be a better teacher who understands the art of defense as being different from offense or something, but "whenever someone does X the stuff I teach doesn't seem to work, so do X" is a pretty great starting point).

[goodmachine]

I had the same thought. Note the OP is also the author: so how do you respond, u/nireyal?

I'm guessing you get this a lot.

[nireyal]

Yup I've heard it a thousand times from people who haven't actually read my books. Hooked is for building habit-forming products to help designers build healthy habits in peoples' lives. There's a section on "the morality of manipulation" in Hooked that discusses how to use these techniques ethically. I also discuss the difference between habits and addictions and why building addictions is unethical. I didn't write the book for Facebook and Twitter, they already know these techniques. I stole their secrets so anyone can use them to help people build better behaviors through the technology we use and the book has been used in all sorts of industries, from education to healthcare, to build better habits. Indistractable uses my expertise to provide an antidote to all sorts of distraction, not just tech related. It's an empowering look at the topic that is much more actionable than going on a "digital detox" or vilifying tech for being so engaging we want to use it. We can have our cake and eat it too by making sure we use tech in a way that serves us instead of us serving it.