Irresistible by Adam Alter review – an entertaining look at technology addiction

This examination of today's tech-zombie epidemic is worth putting your phone down for - at least for a while

Are you addicted to technology? I'm certainly not. In my first sitting reading Adam Alter's Irresistible, an investigation into why we can't stop scrolling and clicking and surfing online, I only paused to check my phone four times. Because someone might have emailed me. Or texted me. One time I stopped to download an app Alter mentioned (research) and the final time I had to check the shares on my play brokerage app, Best Brokers (let's call this one "business").

Half the developed world is addicted to something, and Alter, a professor at New York University, informs us that, increasingly, that something isn't drugs or alcohol, but behaviour. Recent studies suggest the most compulsive behaviour we engage in has to do with cyber connectivity; 40% of us have some sort of internet-based addiction - whether it's checking your email (on average workers check it 36 times an hour), mindlessly scrolling through other people's breakfasts on Instagram or gambling online.