Date and Time:
Location:
Address:
Adam Alter, Ph.D.
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
Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential
Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.
Cognitive psychologist, host of The Psychology Podcast, professor of psychology at Columbia University, director of the Center for Human Potential, and author of eleven books
Susan Cain
#1 New York Times bestselling author of Quiet and Bittersweet
ON ZOOM
How to Fall in Love with Questions: A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty
Elizabeth Weingarten
Journalist and applied behavioral scientist
Heather Havrilesky
“Ask Polly” advice columnist on Substack, essayist, and author
ON ZOOM
Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities
Nilanjana Dasgupta, Ph.D.
Provost Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jerry Kang
Ralph and Shirley Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Law and Distinguished Professor of Asian American Studies at the UCLA School of Law
ON ZOOM
