Natasha Dow Schuell, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (2012; new edition, 2026)

Since its publication in 2012 this has become a touchstone for anybody trying to understand (and counteract) how screens have taken over the world. Schuell starts from the plausible premise that addictions develop out of the confluence of traits and behaviors of the addict and features of the object of addiction. Her book explores the lives of the gamblers and their internal states while gambling, as well as the persistent and increasingly systematic efforts by the gambling industry to "hook and hold" their customers. In terms of the experience of gambling, Schuell's most noteworthy finding is that persistent gamblers are not motivated by the possibility of winning. Rather, they speak of a "zone" in which they lose themselves and their worries. Schuell has very interesting things to say about how this zone both resembles and differs from Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's "flow state." I found myself wondering how it might resemble and differ from the Stoics' tranquillity and, furthermore, from Aristotle's eudaimonia/flourishing. Topics for further research....In her illuminating new preface, written in 2024, Schuell identifies four characteristics that machine gambling and other screen addictions have in common: 1) isolation and asociality 2) continuous action and immediate feedback 3) randomness (as is well known, intermittent reinforcement is most addicting of all 4) non-resolution (i.e. infinite scroll).