Two related books you may find of interest along the lines of Paul Graham's insightful "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" essay:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for today’s densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life. The book takes its title from Nikolaas Tinbergen's concept in animal ethology of the supernormal stimulus, the phenomena by which insects, birds, and fish in his experiments could be lured by a dummy object which exaggerated one or more characteristic of the natural stimulus object such as giant brilliant blue plaster eggs which birds preferred to sit on in preference to their own. Barrett extends the concept to humans and outlines how supernormal stimuli are a driving force behind today’s most pressing problems, including modern warfare, obesity and other fitness problems, while also explaining the appeal of television, video games, and pornography as social outlets."
And also "The Pleasure Trap" from 2006 by Douglas Lisle and Alan Goldhamer, which is mainly about food but much the same idea. They say humans are adapted to eat a certain variety of nutritious foods. But modern industry has made it possible for businesses to sell large quantities of tasty but non-nutritious foods which people get used to. The foods destroy people's health over time in various ways by malnutrition from missing micronutrients and fiber which leads to cancer, heart disease, stroke, and so on. Getting back to enjoying healthy eating generally requires four to twelve weeks of suffering through "neuroadaptation" to appreciate the more subtle tastes of whole healthy foods. The book is summarized here in detail:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160418155513/http://www.drfuhrm...
Here are some other related books emphasizing how children are being harmed by pervasive commercial media and what parents can do (all easier said than done) include:
* "The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online"
* "Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time"
* "Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids-and How to Break the Trance"
* "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
* "The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
Or, as I summarize in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."