Modern life is frenetic, fidgety, structured around routine dopamine hits. It's a serious problem. But is it new? And what are we to do? I present to you: a new theory of distraction.
I'm a psychotherapist, and I work with kids who struggle with electronic device addiction. We have spent a lot of time talking about device dependency/addiction, the neuropsychology of addiction (dopamine), analogizing it to other addictions for perspective, distinguishing it from other addictions to show how difficult it is to manage (because unlike an alcoholic, we can't completely abstain from electronics in modern society so it's like telling an alcoholic that he not only CAN have several drinks each day, but he/she MUST have several drinks each day........and just don't overdo it. Most alcoholics would go on a bender)....and to create awareness that their dependency/addiction to electronics is not a character flaw and does not make them a bad person (because this is how they internalize their addiction). From an evolutionary standpoint, tens of thousands of years of our neuropsychology has not and cannot evolve as fast as technology has in mere decades. Especially for kids whose prefrontal cortexes are still developing until around age 25. Unlike adults/the older generation who still struggle with device addiction post-development, the addiction is literally being wired into the brain development of kids/the younger generation. And worse, many of the algorithms are specifically designed to target the reward system (dopamine) of the brain to keep people on the site for as long as possible to increase advertising revenue. The kids literally have no chance against a system specifically designed by teams of engineers with knowledge of behavioral psychology to override executive functioning. I discuss this with my clients/parents in the context of "Youtube shorts" and TikTok videos, and the dopamine effect, which is related to "anticipation" and intermittent reinforcement......where it is anticipated the next 30/60 second video will be the coolest/funniest video they have ever seen, and if it's not, then the next will be.... and if it's not then the next will, etc. This is the same process that makes slot machines addictive for gamblers.
I have also thoroughly analyzed the role of dopamine/addiction in our political discourse, and the effect it has on tribalism, confirmation bias, and conspiracy theory susceptibility. This article is an overview of everything I've written about the topic, and even contemplates the effect whether GLP-1 agonist drugs (Ozempic) might mitigate toxic political "addictions":
Up pops this substack from Brian and I stop coding to read it – so he’s distracted me (again) – but his articles are always in the discovery quadrant and that’s a very good thing (and the coding was getting intricate at the time but it’s creative). I enjoy reading his articles – he nails it in this one.
A long long time ago I got a degree in marketing and have distrusted advertising ever since. At a young age it was immediately apparent that I would be a diabolical marketeer and by accident I discovered computing and have spent my life in IT (in the productivity/efficiency quadrant I guess). I started my career before the internet and the PC – at the time a dozen colleagues were clattering away on their mechanical typewriters in the typing pool and I showed them how I used our IBM mainframe to write my reports on its word processor (a text editor in those days). Yes I am old. But here’s the thing, I am driven to create (build) things – always have been - I went to a school that wired me this way. I have never gamed and hardly ever used social media apps because they don’t interest me. For more than a decade, at the end of my career, I was director of IT at a leading global cyber security business, so I knew much about the mechanics of web applications, but colleagues were often taken aback by how little I understood about what, for example, Twitter was actually for (it was embarrassing frankly). Would it all have been different if I had started 20 years later and begun a device addiction like many kids and fuzzed my brain ? Probably. The most valuable use I make of the internet is to find out about things that make me curious. Back to the coding.
As I read this excellent piece, I admit to the frivolous thought, "will he, like my beloved Lord Peter Wimsey, have the perfect historical quote for this? Yes, yes he will."
Thank you for injecting humor into an important subject that is normally presented in a preachy, apocalyptic tone (as, of course, the subject demands). It's helpful not only to have the problem clearly and cleverly presented, but to have an achievable goal defined.
....the pocket watch example. How on earth did you find something so obscure and so perfectly apt?......
thanks brian, for this excellent essay. i've been saying the same things for years. and thanks to nick too, for his interesting comments. i knew early on the hazards of the cell phones. in mid 80s i started with brick phone and then onto motorola's first flip phone. i felt very cool and adult having the phone. one day on a busy city bus, i heard my phone ring. me! someone wants to talk to me! quickly i got the little phone out of my pocket, opened it to answer when i realized it was not my flip phone ringing. those were the days before ringtones. all the phones had the same ring. i was inwardly devastated the call was not for me. i wanted that love, and i didn't get it. from that moment on, i knew the neuro-psychological power of these cell phones. i have been a smartphone luddite ever since. friends complain they can't reach me. i tell them to call my land line. friends say they want to text me and i say, that's too much info, friend. just call and leave a message, or email for crissakes! thanks again, brian. i am following your reporting and stories. keep going! j.
(Some of you, fellow dopamine primates that you are, already scrolled past this, impatient to get to “the good bit.”)
I avoid this as much as I can. Nicholas Carr argues well ( " The Shallows") that we are altering ourselves via tech--from being readers, to becoming skimmers. Fidgety; bouncing around; grazing...getting 'the gist of it'...nuance is unnecessary; let's get to the heart of it. And move on.
Haste perhaps doesn't always make 'waste', but hardly ever, I imagine, does it enhance comprehension. If you use Evelyn Woods speed reading to read all of Moby Dick in an afternoon, you'll learn that it's about a whale, and all kinds of problems.
Thank you, Brian. Great Essay and wonderful quotes. There is really is nothing new in the world. I'm trying out a black and white phone. I can remember the first (very small screen )TV we had, when I was 5 yo, black and white of course. When my son was young, most of the TV we shared with him were our favorite BW movies and shows that were on endless reruns on the minor channels. Later in life he shared that he had felt so sorry for us. He thought we had grown up in a completely black and white world and that one day the color had been turned on.
This is a great look at how phones/devices and the internet have invaded our lives. I have always preferred to look at my devices as tools rather than a toy. I still have the dopamine fix I get, but it is usually regarding learning new things and having my mind mulling over your writing and the always thought provoking ideas you have!
With that sincere, yet gratuitous compliment out of the way, it is a problem in general. I guess I am fortunate to use my devices to read interesting stuff, and use as a tool for research be it work or intellectual curiosity. I spend way too much time in the “productivity and efficiency” quadrant, and enjoy the open minded explorations and appreciation of the world around us. I think your “2x2” is a useful taxonomy for thinking about how we are “distracted”. To me being distracted is productive in that it gives us time to sit back and find connections and lessons from seemingly unrelated areas. This has provided insights that have helped drive solutions to problems that by simply being in the “productive” quadrant would not have been found.
This all sounds like a perfect argument for meditation. It helps enormously in quieting and focusing the mind. Also deleting all social media apps. They are the cotton candy of the otherwise rich resource the internet is.
I hated who I became always checking FB or Insta or whatever, compulsively checking for likes. Ugh!!
I’m twice your age so remember even more what life was like before computers, let alone the internet and smartphones. I love the amount of information I can so quickly access, better than a hundred libraries. Art, history, science! All at my fingertips. Even tips for self awareness so I can recognize when I’m caught in a mindless loop.
Your wonderful essay today illustrates this perfectly. What a revelation to read that writing and timepieces were once considered dangers to our mental health. Amazing!
Hee Hee. I am not at all addicted to my phone? Why? Because the type is too damn small for my aging eyes. Who wants to hunt for reading glasses when in search of dopamine?? And I can never master the keyboard. If I want to respond to a text, I have to find my iPad.
Instead I am addicted to my PC, where I can adjust the size to what I want without having stuff disappear off the side of the device. But at least I can't carry it around with me--it isn't a laptop. So when I go out I am free, whether or not I want to be, unless my reading glasses aren't at the very bottom of my purse.
We’re hearing so much now about “phone addiction,” but your writing, Brian, takes it to a higher level. “Mental mush” made me laugh out loud. I’ll be using that one a lot with my fellow addicts!
Like you, I’ve switched to the grayscale setting, and it’s startling how it makes my screen go from HEY, LOOK AT ME! to … <yawn>.
Thank you this has been very helpful. Garden of the Forking Paths is an excellent site, and I will miss it as I combat my addiction. I suppose it's too late to get full year subscription refunds?
And now for something completely shallow--it has occurred to me for the first time that I might have gotten on very well with Diderot. I suppose I used to think the Encyclopedie would have placed him firmly in the Efficiency quadrant. So glad to find out more!
I'm a psychotherapist, and I work with kids who struggle with electronic device addiction. We have spent a lot of time talking about device dependency/addiction, the neuropsychology of addiction (dopamine), analogizing it to other addictions for perspective, distinguishing it from other addictions to show how difficult it is to manage (because unlike an alcoholic, we can't completely abstain from electronics in modern society so it's like telling an alcoholic that he not only CAN have several drinks each day, but he/she MUST have several drinks each day........and just don't overdo it. Most alcoholics would go on a bender)....and to create awareness that their dependency/addiction to electronics is not a character flaw and does not make them a bad person (because this is how they internalize their addiction). From an evolutionary standpoint, tens of thousands of years of our neuropsychology has not and cannot evolve as fast as technology has in mere decades. Especially for kids whose prefrontal cortexes are still developing until around age 25. Unlike adults/the older generation who still struggle with device addiction post-development, the addiction is literally being wired into the brain development of kids/the younger generation. And worse, many of the algorithms are specifically designed to target the reward system (dopamine) of the brain to keep people on the site for as long as possible to increase advertising revenue. The kids literally have no chance against a system specifically designed by teams of engineers with knowledge of behavioral psychology to override executive functioning. I discuss this with my clients/parents in the context of "Youtube shorts" and TikTok videos, and the dopamine effect, which is related to "anticipation" and intermittent reinforcement......where it is anticipated the next 30/60 second video will be the coolest/funniest video they have ever seen, and if it's not, then the next will be.... and if it's not then the next will, etc. This is the same process that makes slot machines addictive for gamblers.
I have also thoroughly analyzed the role of dopamine/addiction in our political discourse, and the effect it has on tribalism, confirmation bias, and conspiracy theory susceptibility. This article is an overview of everything I've written about the topic, and even contemplates the effect whether GLP-1 agonist drugs (Ozempic) might mitigate toxic political "addictions":
https://www.patreon.com/posts/92826194
Up pops this substack from Brian and I stop coding to read it – so he’s distracted me (again) – but his articles are always in the discovery quadrant and that’s a very good thing (and the coding was getting intricate at the time but it’s creative). I enjoy reading his articles – he nails it in this one.
A long long time ago I got a degree in marketing and have distrusted advertising ever since. At a young age it was immediately apparent that I would be a diabolical marketeer and by accident I discovered computing and have spent my life in IT (in the productivity/efficiency quadrant I guess). I started my career before the internet and the PC – at the time a dozen colleagues were clattering away on their mechanical typewriters in the typing pool and I showed them how I used our IBM mainframe to write my reports on its word processor (a text editor in those days). Yes I am old. But here’s the thing, I am driven to create (build) things – always have been - I went to a school that wired me this way. I have never gamed and hardly ever used social media apps because they don’t interest me. For more than a decade, at the end of my career, I was director of IT at a leading global cyber security business, so I knew much about the mechanics of web applications, but colleagues were often taken aback by how little I understood about what, for example, Twitter was actually for (it was embarrassing frankly). Would it all have been different if I had started 20 years later and begun a device addiction like many kids and fuzzed my brain ? Probably. The most valuable use I make of the internet is to find out about things that make me curious. Back to the coding.
As I read this excellent piece, I admit to the frivolous thought, "will he, like my beloved Lord Peter Wimsey, have the perfect historical quote for this? Yes, yes he will."
Thank you for injecting humor into an important subject that is normally presented in a preachy, apocalyptic tone (as, of course, the subject demands). It's helpful not only to have the problem clearly and cleverly presented, but to have an achievable goal defined.
....the pocket watch example. How on earth did you find something so obscure and so perfectly apt?......
Please take Zorro for more walks. If this is a typical result, we all benefit!
thanks brian, for this excellent essay. i've been saying the same things for years. and thanks to nick too, for his interesting comments. i knew early on the hazards of the cell phones. in mid 80s i started with brick phone and then onto motorola's first flip phone. i felt very cool and adult having the phone. one day on a busy city bus, i heard my phone ring. me! someone wants to talk to me! quickly i got the little phone out of my pocket, opened it to answer when i realized it was not my flip phone ringing. those were the days before ringtones. all the phones had the same ring. i was inwardly devastated the call was not for me. i wanted that love, and i didn't get it. from that moment on, i knew the neuro-psychological power of these cell phones. i have been a smartphone luddite ever since. friends complain they can't reach me. i tell them to call my land line. friends say they want to text me and i say, that's too much info, friend. just call and leave a message, or email for crissakes! thanks again, brian. i am following your reporting and stories. keep going! j.
(Some of you, fellow dopamine primates that you are, already scrolled past this, impatient to get to “the good bit.”)
I avoid this as much as I can. Nicholas Carr argues well ( " The Shallows") that we are altering ourselves via tech--from being readers, to becoming skimmers. Fidgety; bouncing around; grazing...getting 'the gist of it'...nuance is unnecessary; let's get to the heart of it. And move on.
Haste perhaps doesn't always make 'waste', but hardly ever, I imagine, does it enhance comprehension. If you use Evelyn Woods speed reading to read all of Moby Dick in an afternoon, you'll learn that it's about a whale, and all kinds of problems.
Thank you, Brian. Great Essay and wonderful quotes. There is really is nothing new in the world. I'm trying out a black and white phone. I can remember the first (very small screen )TV we had, when I was 5 yo, black and white of course. When my son was young, most of the TV we shared with him were our favorite BW movies and shows that were on endless reruns on the minor channels. Later in life he shared that he had felt so sorry for us. He thought we had grown up in a completely black and white world and that one day the color had been turned on.
This is a great look at how phones/devices and the internet have invaded our lives. I have always preferred to look at my devices as tools rather than a toy. I still have the dopamine fix I get, but it is usually regarding learning new things and having my mind mulling over your writing and the always thought provoking ideas you have!
With that sincere, yet gratuitous compliment out of the way, it is a problem in general. I guess I am fortunate to use my devices to read interesting stuff, and use as a tool for research be it work or intellectual curiosity. I spend way too much time in the “productivity and efficiency” quadrant, and enjoy the open minded explorations and appreciation of the world around us. I think your “2x2” is a useful taxonomy for thinking about how we are “distracted”. To me being distracted is productive in that it gives us time to sit back and find connections and lessons from seemingly unrelated areas. This has provided insights that have helped drive solutions to problems that by simply being in the “productive” quadrant would not have been found.
This all sounds like a perfect argument for meditation. It helps enormously in quieting and focusing the mind. Also deleting all social media apps. They are the cotton candy of the otherwise rich resource the internet is.
I hated who I became always checking FB or Insta or whatever, compulsively checking for likes. Ugh!!
I’m twice your age so remember even more what life was like before computers, let alone the internet and smartphones. I love the amount of information I can so quickly access, better than a hundred libraries. Art, history, science! All at my fingertips. Even tips for self awareness so I can recognize when I’m caught in a mindless loop.
Your wonderful essay today illustrates this perfectly. What a revelation to read that writing and timepieces were once considered dangers to our mental health. Amazing!
Hee Hee. I am not at all addicted to my phone? Why? Because the type is too damn small for my aging eyes. Who wants to hunt for reading glasses when in search of dopamine?? And I can never master the keyboard. If I want to respond to a text, I have to find my iPad.
Instead I am addicted to my PC, where I can adjust the size to what I want without having stuff disappear off the side of the device. But at least I can't carry it around with me--it isn't a laptop. So when I go out I am free, whether or not I want to be, unless my reading glasses aren't at the very bottom of my purse.
We’re hearing so much now about “phone addiction,” but your writing, Brian, takes it to a higher level. “Mental mush” made me laugh out loud. I’ll be using that one a lot with my fellow addicts!
Like you, I’ve switched to the grayscale setting, and it’s startling how it makes my screen go from HEY, LOOK AT ME! to … <yawn>.
Thank you this has been very helpful. Garden of the Forking Paths is an excellent site, and I will miss it as I combat my addiction. I suppose it's too late to get full year subscription refunds?
“if Haidt and his fellow Cassandras, are wrong” then they’re not Cassandras.
And now for something completely shallow--it has occurred to me for the first time that I might have gotten on very well with Diderot. I suppose I used to think the Encyclopedie would have placed him firmly in the Efficiency quadrant. So glad to find out more!