That technology use has effects on our psychological well-being has become, by this point, well-known and widely recognized. But the concern is ordinarily limited to the distraction, anxiety, addiction, overstimulation, or other faults in control that appear downstream of specific technological devices or frameworks, such as smartphones, social media, or LLMs. These are real problems, to be sure; but they are merely symptoms of a deeper habituation suffered through unthinking ways of living in an environment thoroughly structured by technological modes of thinking.
I. Beneath the Surface
In 2024, I added a feature to my phone: a visual on the lock screen which shows how many times during the day I have unlocked it, and for how long. The first two days, I used my phone without changing any habits. To my horror, despite thinking myself a relatively restrained person when it comes to using the device, I unlocked it 76 times the one day and 68 the other.
Since, I have attempted (mostly successful, apart from traveling days) to unlock it no more than 20 times per day. Most especially, I avoid the thoughtless or time-wasting unlock. If I do not have something otherwise immediately occupying my attention, that is, I do not want to occupy it instead with the informational chaos that the phone so readily delivers. Let me think or observe, instead.
We have all likely suffered this device-mediated-distractedness, whether in our own lives or in the lives of those close to us, or both: not only that distractedness, but in fact the whole environment of restlessness, anxiety, and diffusely-scattered thought to which it belongs. It renders users attention-bound to their devices, compulsively ensuring that no notification goes missed; makes them impatient with any delayed gratification; and emotionally volatile, as the physical world and the digital simulacrum present conflicting accounts of what is and ought to be.
But these effects, damaging though they are to the integrity of our lives, signify much deeper causes than the mere presence of devices or patterns of their use. That is, our anxieties and distractedness caused by the smartphone or social media are only the superficial marks of technology’s effects on our psyches. To understand this more fully, it will be helpful both to disabuse ourselves of certain common presuppositions and to subsequently take a deeper look into the nature of the human mind.
II. Undoing Mechanistic Presuppositions
In his Phenomenon of Life, Hans Jonas states that we have an “almost irresistible tendency… to interpret human functions in terms of the artifacts that take their place, and artifacts in terms of the replaced human functions” (110). For centuries, the human mind was compared to a book. In the past century, the brain has been thought of as “hardware” and thoughts as “software”. Therapy has sometimes been treated as “reprogramming”; education as “information transfer”; capacity for attention becomes “bandwidth”, and so on. Just recently, a young man claimed he was able to find a solution by “imagining what an LLM would do”. Conversely, our LLM agents will show “Thinking…” or the like while processing our requests.
Underlying these diverse expressions, one comes to believe, there are found reductive commonalities. In other words, what we are doing is no different than what our machines or technologies are doing. There might be different means through which the goals are pursued, but each is ordered from beginning to end through a “mechanism”, which mechanism is ultimately the explanation for the goal’s accomplishment. While the use of our technologies to explain our own functioning (or even the machines’) often begins as a metaphor, such usage tends to blur and lose its distinction over time. We stop questioning the difference and unthinkingly accept the apparent similitude. But words are never mere words; they shape how we think about the realities themselves. We may not intend to think of our minds literally like computers; but using the language of “hardware” and “software” reinforces an associative conception regardless of our intentions.
This tendency is common to humankind as a whole: we tend to condense complex issues into simple statements whenever that makes day-to-day life easier. But it is also something reinforced today by the problem-oriented-mindset of modern technological society. The pipeline from simplistic reduction to immediate operationalization runs smoothly. But we have put ourselves into this pipeline; we are what becomes operationalized, we become “resources” to be used.
III. Nature and Formation of Habits
A brief but relatively comprehensive primer on the nature of the psyche, its faculties, actions, and objects is available here. Anyone interested in a deeper dive should begin there.
Here, we want to focus on one key element discussed therein (and in the corresponding white paper): habit. “We are creatures of habit”, it is often said, and this is true. But we need to understand the nature of habit correctly. Often, they are reduced to what is merely “automatic” or even unthinking. Some do form this way. But others form by choice, by deliberate action. In other words, a habit can be a perfection of self-control. Every truly well-formed habit, though it may be reinforced by certain mechanisms of the brain, body, and neurochemical system, consists also in a cognitive and moral intentionality—a recognition of the good and the will to pursue it.
Conversely, those habits which are formed without our intentional involvement may be to our benefit or harm; but very often, they are the latter. The smoker seldom intends the habitual inclination to cigarettes, or the alcoholic to liquor. Someone may be raised to keep his room clean, but, given freedom from strict parenting, rebel to the contrary in young adulthood. It is not mere repetition of action that matters in the formation of habits, in other words, but also action’s integration with purpose. This includes not only the things we do physically, but also our thinking itself. Thinking, too, forms habits—ordinary ways of judging—that can be either beneficial or harmful. For not all thinking is entirely self-controlled; the things we watch, the fantasies in which we indulge—these too go to forming habits of thought.
IV. Effects of the Medium
It is in habitual harms, both those formed through action and thinking, that we can see the intervention of technological devices and systems most clearly, as, for instance, in the compulsive behavior many exhibit regarding their phones. In part, this harm is due to the content, which is often novel—albeit only a little—and presented in a way that provides a very easy stimulation (scrolling is much like taking tiny drags off a cigarette or a vape) along with a gradual reshaping of norms. For instance, one scrolling through video shorts can become accustomed to seeing less and less female modesty, or more and worse violence. One can try to solve this by the use of content filters or restrictive settings, by blocking or muting certain accounts.
But it is not just the content of our technology that harms us. Indeed, the very problem-oriented way of thinking that characterizes modern technological society is itself a habit, or set of habits. For the most fundamental essence of a habit is this: it is a way of holding ourselves towards the world. When our world is pervasively structured by technologies, as extensions of our thought and abilities, we often fail to see the world as anything else than how technology reveals it.
For one example, consider the difference in coming across a profound and insightful passage in a book and coming across that same passage on social media. When our eyes light upon the line upon a page, with nothing else in our hands and nothing else asking for our attention, we will probably stop and reflect on the passage; perhaps mark it, or write it down. On the phone, we tap like and scroll onwards.
Or—perhaps—if we are frequent users of the phone and/or of social media, we come across the passage and immediately think how it may be packaged to receive likes, to draw attention, to promote ourselves or our institutions and programs. I know that I have myself been guilty of this. Rather than living in accordance with the technology of the book, which promotes silent and individual reflection (which too may become a fault, carried to an extreme), we live in accordance with the digital social medium, which promotes quick and easy engagement. Rather than appreciated as a passage for contemplation, as something to be truly digested, or as part of a greater whole, it becomes interpreted as a potential signal to extract and use for attention.
This reveals the deeper set of habits which modern technological society and its various media have formed in us: a resource-and-use-oriented holding-towards all things, a calculative way of thinking that allows the fundamental realities and importances of things to be obscured.
V. Extension and Amputation
There can be no serious doubt that modern technologies have rendered us countless material benefits. But although they may fruitfully extend our abilities to cultivate and store food, improve the speed and efficiency of our communication, and enable us to live more comfortably, our unquestioning adoption of these instrumental improvements comes at a great cost, not only of unforeseen physical side-effects but often of great and uncontrolled psychological re-orientation as well. We ask what content we would like to see—and not whether we should be “consuming content” at all. We get information faster—and do not question if its real worth is found in a slower and more difficult way of acquiring it. And we allow our machines to accomplish our tasks without having to practice or think about those tasks themselves; and thus become more productive at the expense of being less capable.
Carried to their extremes, these “extensions” may become “amputations”. For instance, were we to live our whole lives outsourcing the remembrance of things important to machines, we would effectively cut out our own memories. Many a young man or woman, grown up in the digital environment of the smartphone, finds face-to-face interaction (especially with the opposite sex) profoundly difficult, almost impossible.
Why are human beings capable of choosing such self-destructive paths? This question is not one about particular choices, but about the manner in which we make our choices at all; what enables us to do the things we do, as human beings, and why? It is an important question, not to be answered quickly. Slow and consistent reflection alone will help us find a true understanding.
VI. Conclusion: Human Formation
“Diagnosis and description”, writes Marshall McLuhan in the preface to his Gutenberg Galaxy, “must precede valuation and therapy.” Put otherwise, we need to know what we are treating before we can decide how to treat it. Before we can fix human formation, we must know what it is and why it has gone awry. A place to start, I suggest, is in recognizing an unhealthy behavior: namely, the attempt to turn over formation to systems of education. That is: we have for too long attempted not only to measure our development by a progression through grade levels, courses, test scores, and certifications or degrees, but to regard this as the development itself. Such befits a mechanistic view of the person.
Continue the Inquiry
This question is developed more fully in the Humanitas Technica white paper, “Technology and the Psyche” and the theoretical paper, “The Soul and the Machine”, which identify more fully the nature of the psychological faculties, their habits, and technology’s effects upon them.
No responses yet