Why the Computer is an Anxiety Machine
"Men have become the tools of their tools." - Henry Thoreau, 1854
I find that people are generally familiar with the concept of evolutionary mismatch these days—at least at the cocktail parties I attend, where my M.O. is usually to educate people about the evolutionary history of their ancestors. “You know, prehistoric women would have typically breast-fed for about four years, not just one.”
As you can probably tell, I’m a huge hit.
Evolutionary mismatch is a broad concept in psychology that can explain a lot. The basic idea is that a significant portion of human misery and sickness results from living in ways—and in environments for which—our minds and bodies were not designed. “Our modern skulls,” Tooby and Cosmides observed, “house a stone-aged mind.” Because of this, our interaction with modern phenomena, such as money, cement, genetically modified food, and writing, can often be negative.
For example, I am still routinely surprised by how much more difficult and frustrating writing is than speaking. Evolutionary mismatch is a big reason. Throughout most of human history, communication was synchronous and unmediated. It was conducted among relatively few, mostly familiar people in a mixed form—as in, we spoke and gesticulated at the same time. Writing turns these traditional parameters on their head. This post is:
asynchronous (you’re reading this well after I’ve written it)
mediated (by, perhaps, the computer?!)
intended for mostly strangers (no offense; I’m sure you’re lovely)
text-only (well, there are some pictures, but you get my point)
Why do we put up with this? Why endure the costs of evolutionary mismatches, such as writing, at all? The basic answer is: because in many cases, outcomes are improved. Take Guns, Germs, and Steel as an example. Jared Diamond describes the impetus of the book as a question a friend asked him once about why Europe conquered the New World and not the other way around. If Diamond had replied to his friend’s question then and there—with speech—his answer would have been far less comprehensive than the book that resulted.
I’ll return to our tolerance for evolutionary mismatch in a future post. The point for now is that the concept of mismatch has become popularized and people no longer give me funny looks when I bring it up.1
Computers as Evolutionary Mismatch
Now, the thing about these people at cocktail parties—otherwise known as “my friends”—is that the majority of them spend most of their waking hours hunched over a computer or phone. That’s a pretty big deal considering that humans prior to the 20th century never spent any time at all on digital devices. Most of my friends (and clients) are acutely aware of the negative effects of these devices and routinely complain about them, but don’t seem able to do anything about it. To me, that suggests the presence of evolutionary mismatch, no different from knowing that we shouldn’t eat a bag of Doritos, and then eating a bag of Doritos. But unlike some of the more straightforward mismatches we’ve discussed, the computer is a more complicated example because at least two separate forces are at work.
The first is regular old evolutionary mismatch. This includes all the ways in which the computer and related devices deliver an experience that humans aren’t equipped to handle, from blue light and the concentration of information, to two-dimensional interaction. The second concerns the market pressures to which digital devices have been subject. Similar to organisms, these devices and the programs they house have undergone a process of selection. Ironically, many of the ways our devices fail us is a result of what “we” have “chosen.” (Yes, eventually I’ll explain those air-quotes.) I mean, isn’t it a bit odd that we suffer so much at the hands of things we made—ostensibly—for our benefit?
Evolutionary Mismatch 101: The Costs of Computer Work
How do computers and similar devices provide a less-than-ideal experience? I’m going to focus on the psychological side because the physical costs have been well-documented: the state of constant, hunched tenseness is bad for your back, neck, and jaw; blue light and close focus is bad for your eyes; a sedentary lifestyle is bad for your cardiovascular health; and so on.
Too much choice.
When I open my computer, I can do an almost unlimited number of things. Should I check my email? Pop into Youtube? Read the news? Write another Living Fossils article? If I open a physical book, on the other hand, all I can do is read it.
Unless someone hands me an E-reader. Then I must ask: Which book should I read?
If analog experience is like a single hiking trail, then digital experience is like a network of trails that—at frequent intervals—requires you to choose your path. And if we have learned anything from Robert Frost, it is that “way leads on to way.” Every decision will lead to more decisions; it is never one-and-done.
The constant presence of readily-available alternatives comes with three costs. The first is choice overload. Some optionality is nice; too much is bad. The second is choice fatigue. When the barrier to switching activities is low, we must “keep deciding” to stick with what we’ve chosen. This is true of analog experience, too, of course. I could stop reading my book, get up, and take a bath. But the cost of doing so—lifting myself out of bed and waiting for five minutes while the tub fills up—is much higher than simply clicking two inches over, and this makes it easier to continue reading. The third cost is choice dissatisfaction. As Rob showed in Digging Into Boring, boredom measures the opportunity cost of what we are doing, a cost which increases with the presence of (often attention-grabbing) alternatives. This is how an E-reader, by its very nature, undermines the quality of the books loaded onto it. A potentially better read is just a click away.
A Missing Dimension.
Another downside to E-readers is that our interaction with them is digital and two-dimensional. We miss the benefit of remembering where a certain sentence was—somewhere in the first third of the book, in the top left—and forego the ability to physically interact with the text through highlighting, making notes, bending pages, and leaving stickies. No wonder people understand and retain information better on paper. Even when it comes to editing these articles, I usually print them out. Especially if the argument is complex or convoluted, it helps to have a bird’s-eye view of its twists and turns.
It really is all too easy to get sucked into the computer and miss the big picture. Even babies are entranced by the concentration of information that screens provide. But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing and that’s why taking a break, say by going for a walk, is an excellent way to overcome the sort of mental roadblocks that the computer keeps us mired in.
Some of history’s greatest thinkers swore by walks.2 I myself, while writing my first book, found that between a morning of sitting at the computer and writing, and an afternoon of hiking, most of my writing occurred in the afternoon. Sometimes I’d be thirty seconds into my afternoon walk—still within view of the house—and be so overcome with inspiration that I’d sit down and write for another hour in my notebook. If you’ve ever heard of or experienced the shower effect, you know what I’m talking about.
Movement through—and interaction with—three-dimensional space seems to facilitate thought. Not so surprising when you consider the history of our species, is it? By cramming a ton of information into a small space, digital devices create a cramped, immobile, two-dimensional experience that likely doesn’t allow for peak imagination, creativity, or insight. The computer often is the box we have to think outside of.
The output of computer work is likewise flat. Plenty of my friends and clients complain that despite feeling exhausted at the end of the day, and having the impression that they worked hard, they have nothing to show for it. In my opinion, they mean this more literally than they know. You can’t hold a finished spreadsheet or weigh a pile of emails in your hand. You can’t point to a stack of completed meetings and say: “I did that.” The products of modern work just don’t light up our productivity sensors in the same way as a freshly-mown lawn, knitted sweater, or baked loaf of bread. Work that requires physical exertion and produces a visual, tangible outcome is inherently more satisfying.
Parasociality.
Our devices offer parasocial connection, whether through phone or video calls, messaging apps, or social media. These forms of communication simulate many aspects of in-person interaction but invariably fall short. These shortcomings themselves cause anxiety, whether it’s buffering on a video chat, or not being able to see someone’s face on the phone and therefore not knowing when they are about to speak. But perhaps the biggest disconnect is that our devices offer an experience that is not quite being around others and not quite being alone—you know, the only two states of existence throughout the course of human history.
As I argued in The Need for Social Insulation, parasociality is a kind of social purgatory, which produces a constant, low-level state of anxiety. The modern person can be contacted instantly, at any moment of the day, by one of potentially hundreds of people who occupy vastly different roles in their life. Some of this will be positive (text from friend) and some will be negative (email from boss asking you WTF you are doing). But because we can’t predict what or when, we must constantly be on guard. Ready for anything.
At Living Fossils, we have even recommended sociality as one of the best distractors from unpleasant internal states because of the total shift in attention that the presence of other people requires. Yet people also need social breaks. It used to be that presence was presence and absence was absence. But because most people carry their phone everywhere they go—even into the woods—they aren’t ever “out of touch” in the way that any human in the past, not physically in the presence of another, was.
Distractor Extraordinaire.
The computer—and to a greater extent, the smartphone—distracts us spectacularly. Oh, are you in the middle of reading a profound article on the nature of grief? Bam, here are some women in bikinis…Memorial day sale! Were you trying to see what dates your family is going on vacation so you can book tickets? Here comes a Gchat from one of your friends! Sorry, were you trying to rearrange some files on your computer, with the internet off so you wouldn’t be distracted? Virus report! Turns out you’re still safe and sound, but we just wanted to let you know…
Between the constant availability of potentially better options, and the capacity of my devices to distract me, I’ll often open my computer or pull out my phone with a specific goal in mind, and 20 minutes later have entirely forgotten what it was. A friend of mine who works primarily on the computer tells me something similar. She suspects her devices are majorly exacerbating—if they did not in the first place cause—her ADHD. I believe her.
One cost of distraction is obviously flow, something for which that guy with the impossible-to-pronounce last name is famous.3 More colloquially, we can just say: the pleasure of being focused on and engaged with something.
A less obvious cost is task-switching. When I was growing up, “multi-tasking” was all the rage. It has since been proven—unsurprisingly—to be impossible. Basically, when people think they are multitasking, they are actually working in serial rather than parallel, constantly switching their attention from one thing to another. Not only does this lead to a fragmented and stressful experience, but it’s also inefficient. When you step away from something, you don’t return to it with the same level of focus, something I am reminded of whenever someone has the indecency to interrupt one of my writing blocks.
It turns out that it’s just better to do one thing at a time. (Glad we needed psychologists for this.) Yet our devices are pulling us in the opposite direction. In all sorts of directions at once, in fact. Our attention is being quartered! How did it come to this?
The Evolution of Digital Devices
Similar to organisms, digital devices have undergone a process of selection. It’s not natural selection, although the logic is similar. Basically, digital devices and the offerings within them—apps on your phone, programs on your computer—have been selected over time by their profitability. And because the advertising model prevails, profit depends on user time spent. Devices and software are therefore selected for their ability to capture your attention. The ones that are most successful persist and pass on their successful techniques to the next generation of products (e.g. endless scroll, emotional hijacking).
There is pretty wide acknowledgement, spearheaded by Tristan Harris and others, that a time- or attention-based economy is a bad one. But not much change seems to be on the horizon. If anything, the problem is likely to get worse. So people need to take a proactive approach. This is actually one of the few topics on which I will step out of my traditionally passive and reflective role as a therapist. In this day and age, a person must have a plan of attack for their digital devices. (And their children’s.) Digital devices and the programs on them are just too powerful otherwise. For the past 20 years, some of our country’s brightest minds have been developing newer and better ways to hijack your attention.
Conclusion
For me, the computer is simultaneously something that demands my attention—I get sucked into it, sit hunched and tense, and often cannot pull myself away from its bright light and promise—and fragments it. It’s not unusual for me to leave the computer with little sense of how I spent my time and literally nothing to show for it.
Not always, though. Sometimes I’ll manage to spend a glorious two hours on a single task, which is something that rarely, if ever, happens on my phone. We can think of the phone as a newer, better organism in the game of capturing and dividing our attention.
Amidst all this doom and gloom, I should also mention that devices are incredible. Some of my favorite moments throughout the day, from watching hockey highlights in the morning to shows in the evening with my wife, are made possible by them. Because some outcomes are improved, we put up with the tradeoffs. In addition to entertaining us, devices tend to contribute to a persistent, low-level anxiety due to the kind of choice they present. Their two-dimensionality, parasocial nature, and ability to distract only make things worse.
The experiential positives and negatives of devices can be understood from the perspective of evolutionary mismatch. There’s a reason social media, for a social species, is so alluring. There’s also a reason people have been increasingly relying on videos to learn: we originally learned everything by listening, watching, and doing—and nothing by reading. To the extent that technology resonates with our evolved design, it comforts us, and vice versa.
Given the amount of psychological engineering behind our devices, I don’t think a modern human, waylaid with a stone-aged mind, has the luxury of being a bystander anymore. People must take a proactive approach to managing their attention. It might sound trite, but our life is our experience, and our experience is what we attend to. If we want to experience life outside the box, it’s time to get moving.
One important source of the popularity is probably Animal Spirits by Nobel Laureates George Akerlof and Robert Schiller, who drew the term in the title from John Maynard Keynes way back in the 30s. The notion of animal spirits evokes the idea that we are “just” fallible animals, with biases and all-too-human emotions that explain (irrational) economic behavior. Others economists, including Vernon Smith and Terry Burnham, and psychologists, especially Steve Pinker and Steve Stewart-Williams, have written successful books aimed at broader audiences to bring the idea to the attention of the public.
My two favorite books about walking are A Walk in the Woods and Walking. These also happen to be the only books on walking I’ve read.
Csikszentmihalyi—go ahead, give it a try.
Six-cent-mihaly (Kahneman, _Thinking, Fast and Slow_, p. 40) 😉
More articles about evolutionary mismatch please! Such a great topic. Thank you!