Adam Alter, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business
Irresistible: Designing for Behavioral Addiction
Facebook has 1.5 billion users; Instagram users upload sixty million new photos every day. Twenty million people count and monitor every step with Fitbit. Two-thirds of all adults suffer from sleep deprivation, 95% use an electronic device that emits light in the hour before bed, and 60% of adults (ages 18-64) keep their phones next to them while they sleep. Some of the world’s greatest technocrats have the strictest limits on technology for their children. In 2010, when Steve Jobs, a low-tech parent, was asked if his kids loved the iPad, he replied, “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” He knew the lure of his beautiful, tactile, absorbing, brilliant invention.
Technology designers are extremely skilled at creating interactive environments for consumers. The colors, fonts, and sounds are tested and polished and refined countless times, and the feel of the product, what it’s like in your hand or on your body, is key. Technology is intentionally designed to deeply engage its user. Is it any wonder that our attention span is evaporating?

Upcoming Events
Poverty, by America (Event 1 of 2)
Matthew Desmond, Ph.D.
Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton University
Reuben Jonathan Miller, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
Poverty, by America (Event 2 of 2)
Matthew Desmond, Ph.D.
Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton University
Alex Kotlowitz
Bestselling author, journalist, and professor at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University
Evanston Township High School Auditorium
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
Note: Event start time is Central Time (CT).
Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society
Arline T. Geronimus, Sc.D.
Professor in the School of Public Health and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan
Doriane C. Miller, MD
Professor of Medicine and the inaugural director of the Center for Community Health and Vitality and the director of Health Equity Integration for the Institute of Translational Medicine at the University of Chicago
ON ZOOM