Hard-wired to keep watching
Unpacking the reasons why we get trapped by apps and algorithms. Exploring the primitive roots of our desire to focus and fixate on things even when they aren't good for us.
Lately I’ve been thinking about our inclination to keep watching, scrolling, and engaging with screens even though we know that screen overuse is not healthy for us.
Rooted in our evolutionary past, where vigilance and attention to environmental cues were essential for survival, this innate drive to remain attuned to our surroundings has found new expression in our constant interaction with smartphones and other screen devices.
Through repetition, we’ve developed this collective urge to check, watch, and not look away from our screens. Our smartphones have become the window we use to peer into our environment, almost as if we are tethered to them or as if they’ve become another body part. Our dependence on these devices has seamlessly integrated them into the fabric of our daily lives, blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the real, and shaping our perceptions of the world around us.
They’re built this way on purpose
Our brains are wired to seek out novelty, connection to a group, and positive social experiences. On the other hand, our brains are also wired to focus on deadly, dangerous, and disgusting things. This is part of the survival packaging that once ensured our ancestors’ survival in the wild.
However, in the digital age, this desire to keep watching can be exploited by addictive apps and algorithms designed to capture our attention and keep us hooked. This week, I wanted to take a closer look at the evolutionary origins of our propensity to keep watching and not look away. By design, some technologies are built to exploit our primal instincts, shaping our behaviours and experiences in the modern world.
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Evolved to adapt
Put simply, our brains are designed to keep us alive. Moment to moment, our brains are processing information from our surrounding environment. The brain has evolved to gather important information; we store the information that will ensure our survival and ignore or get rid of the information that doesn’t.
For example, when foraging for food in the wild, our brains have evolved, with fine attunement, to identify edible plants and potential sources of nourishment while disregarding irrelevant stimuli like background noise or non-food items, ensuring our survival by focusing on the essential information.
Throughout our evolution, our brains have developed intricate neural networks capable of recognizing patterns, discerning cause and effect, and extracting meaningful insights from our surroundings. This capacity for meaning-making enables us to adapt to diverse environments, learn from experiences, and make informed decisions crucial for our survival. Whether distinguishing between friend and foe, discerning between edible and poisonous plants, or navigating complex social dynamics, our brains excel at processing information to ensure our continued existence in an ever-changing world.
The human orienting response
Our orienting response, shaped by evolutionary pressures, helps us to prioritize information that is novel, intriguing, or potentially hazardous. This instinctual bias toward novelty and danger stems from our ancestors’ need to constantly assess and adapt to their environments, where encountering new stimuli or potential threats could have significant implications for survival.
As a result, our brains are finely tuned to detect and attend to unfamiliar or unexpected stimuli, directing our attention toward anything that deviates from the norm or poses a potential risk. This heightened sensitivity to novelty and danger is part of our survival package which enables us to quickly assess and respond to unfamiliar situations, learn from new experiences, and adapt to the changing environment.
Why we keep watching
We are wired to keep watching, attuning, and orienting to certain information that either ensures our survival or helps us avoid dangers. This innate tendency stems from our evolutionary history, where social cohesion and cooperation were essential for the collective survival of the group. As a result, we are naturally drawn to social cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and vocal intonations, that provide valuable insights into others people’s intentions, emotional state, and their potential threat value.
Addictive apps and algorithms are meticulously crafted to exploit our primitive instincts and this innate drive to keep watching, thus capturing our attention and engagement for prolonged periods. Drawing from principles of behavioural psychology and relational neuroscience, these platforms employ a variety of persuasive techniques, such as offering variable rewards, social validation, and personalized recommendations, to hijack our attention and encourage compulsive usage.
And that’s not all…
Addictive apps and algorithms also capitalize on our instinctual urge to seek novelty, social connection, and validation by creating a potent feedback loop that keeps us perpetually hooked. Through sophisticated algorithms that continuously analyze user data and behaviour, these platforms can refine and optimize their strategies for maximum impact, further entrenching their hold on our attention.
We’re in a cultural moment where it feels necessary to pay attention and the costs of looking away seems quite high. At a deeper level, this stems from our drive to survive. Looking away from potential dangers is costly and we’ve become both socially and emotionally dependent on our screens as a source of information about the world. We’ve also become reliant on these algorithms to tell us what we should focus on and what deserves our attention, which may be eroding our ability to discern what requires our time and energy.
From our instinctual responses to novelty and danger to our innate drive to monitor social-emotional cues, we’ve developed a collective urge to remain vigilant and attentive for fear of missing something important.
By understanding the evolutionary imperative behind our desire to keep watching, we gain a clearer understanding about the ways in which our brains have evolved to prioritize certain information while filtering out distractions, ultimately shaping our perceptions, decisions, and interactions with the world around us.
Take good care this week,
Jake