Has Technology Become Addictive?

In this bylined essay for The Saturday Evening Post, Adam Alter lays out a six-part framework — compelling goals, unpredictable rewards, incremental progress, escalating difficulty, unresolved tension, and social pull — that he argues explains why platforms like social feeds, games, and streaming services are associated with compulsive, hard-to-stop use. He points to technology leaders who limit their own children's device access as evidence that people closest to the design process are wary of it. Alter stops short of calling the underlying products harmful outright; instead he argues that thoughtful design changes and cultural habits around device-free time could reduce problematic use without requiring total abstinence. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as Alter's own condensed public statement of his design critique, written for a general audience.

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