The New Human-Computer Interface

The human mind adapts to any kind of stimulus. Whether that stimulus is a reward or punishment changes the dopamine signaling pathways in our brain, something demonstrated recently by renowned psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke. The evolution of the mind in the wake of digital media is an unprecedented change that we are still struggling to understand. Changes that take place are physiological in nature, some of them being maladaptive to us as a species.

Our attention span is decreasing due to premeditated instant-gratification that we encounter on a daily basis. Among other things, we expect our friends to respond to our text messages in a timely manner and to be notified of breaking news the moment it happens. We feel urges and rely on the lightening fast speed of 5G to relieve those needs for instantaneous feedback.

We use technology without realizing the asymmetry going on here, and the cost that we are paying for it. It’s like throwing away trash and still being an environmentalist. At some point, we should start to realizing the hidden cost-benefit relationship that goes on with addictive media.

But what’s so deceiving about technology is that we celebrate it as if it were the liberation of the species from material goods. Let’s specify what I mean here by technology, since most technological innovation is good rather than bad. The innocuous scrolling on instagram whenever you have a free moment, or the video on YouTube that proves your friend wrong in an argument.

These sorts of interactions foster different types of dependencies that make us fragile in various ways. What do I mean by fragile? We are unable to cope with daily life more and more in the absence of these devices, like someone who is lost in their own neighborhood after not having access to Google Maps.

TikTok eliminates boredom; a possible reason that we are seeing a growing number of cases of anxiety and depression amongst adolescents. We treat the symptoms of the problem, advocating teens to be more conscious of the way they use social media, yet our limited understanding of the scope of the problem inhibits us from doing much else.

Pornography saps your libido, which is one of the reasons why increasing number of men in their 20s are experiencing erectile dysfunction. Viagra was designed to help men who are 50 years older than those who have started taking it now.

Our primitive brains have not evolved much since our hunter/gatherer ancestors thousands of years ago. We’re dealing with an entirely novel environment that our ancient hardware is not equipped to deal with. Even when you masturbate, you’re fooling your genitalia into thinking you’re having sex.

Our extermination of boredom and sexual frustration is causing us to desire information that is bite-sized and easier to process. Cut to the point, give me the deets, let me get to the climax..what is left in the wake of this dependency?

Humans are changing in various ways because of the way that we interface with technology. No longer do we meet people in novel ways to strike up conversations, or that we are able to bide time by ourselves without distraction. We are living in an entirely new world; even the advent of remote work is ushering in a new way of how we get things done.

But here’s the thing, it’s not all doom and gloom. You can jerk off to oblivion with your VR headset and never seemingly have to deal with the current reality we live in, or go out and face the awkward discomfort of dealing with a real stranger one-on-one.

Am I advocating that you throw your computer out of the window and become a hermit? Absolutely not, although it might make for a cool instagram story (ironically). The modern struggle is to live as authentically as you can in the wake of other people constantly trying to manipulate you, whether that is through influencer marketing, status quo political ideologies, or expectations about who you should be.

Let’s take our millennial friend Ben as an example. He’s a good guy who posts pictures of his family at Thanksgiving and likes to drink Venti Mocha lattes on Saturday mornings while scrolling on Reddit.

A lot of the values can be directly attributed to the community he grew up in. His close relationship to his mother taught him to hold the door open for women and laugh at their jokes even if he didn’t find them funny. His father’s authoritative parenting style attempted to imbibe the type of self-referential masculinity that encapsulates “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.”

We can expect that Ben had a healthy mix of parenting and friendships as he grew up, nevertheless, if we measure his attention span, it actually wasn’t spent mostly with actual humans.

Ben spends most of his life interacting with people online, around 7 hours per day, which, according to some studies, is slightly lower than the 8 hour average. Most of the beliefs about himself stem from what he is exposed to online, because his brain has no way of differentiating between someone who liked his witty YouTube comment and a stranger giving him a high-five on the street.

At a neurobiological level, the dopamine-reward pathway is triggered in the same way in both instances. A majority of who we are is the product of our online activity, creating online personalities that become more real than the interactions we have in our daily lives.

Ben replies “HAHAHAHAHA OMG I’M DYING LAUGHING” in response to a silly video his friend sent him, yet to the casual observer his face emits nothing more than a slight twitch at the corner of the mouth. It’s as if Ben is living two concurrent realities simultaneously, one removed from the present that exists somewhere in the ether of the internet, and another one that presents itself to the outside world like a mask on a face.

He’s had a girlfriend whom he respects. They both agree that systemic racism is the most pressing matter facing their country at the moment, yet his online search history reveals a personality that he hides from his girlfriend. He finds neoconservative arguments criticizing Black Lives Matter to be highly captivating and believes that a lot of people need to get their shit together and stop playing the victim. Yet the only entity aware of this surreptitious behavior is his browser history on Google Chrome.

He has sex with his girlfriend once, maybe twice a week. On average they spend 3–4 minutes in missionary position, before Ben switches to Doggystyle and then cowgirl. His belief that sex should be an equal representation of power by both partners culminates in his orgasm while his girlfriend is on top of him at the end; emboldening the belief that equality is more sacred than individual pleasure.

Yet Ben hides another dark secret from his girlfriend here, one that only his most intimate friend Google knows about. His fantasies are not fulfilled in the bedroom with his girlfriend, but rather in private browsing mode in the confines of his bathroom when no one is at home. He enjoys seeing women in a more docile position during sex, oftentimes slapped and called names. He enjoys the idea of women being weak and objects of pleasure, yet the Ben we all see and know is one with strong feminist beliefs who vehemently nods his head in agreement to any feminist issue. You might call Ben a sick and dishonest pervert, but this hidden identity is no more existent than his private browsing history. How would you know who he really is?

Either way, he respects his girlfriend in real life and would never dream of performing any of the sinister acts he sees on Pornhub.

This is where the cognitive dissonance between our online and present realities begin to clash. It’s not that Ben is a bad person for his hiding his conservative beliefs or enjoying sadomasochistic pornography, it’s that his brain is struggling more and more to compartmentalize both realities while maintaining an honest sense of his own identity.

That’s why he can’t describe his erectile dysfunction to his girlfriend the next time he sees her, or his acquiescence to his girlfriend’s proposal to attend a Black Lives Matter rally.

Now you could say that all he needs to do is be a bit more honest or risk losing his own girlfriend. Sure, that’s what every self-help book would recommend as well, insisting that it’s better to live one coherent reality that is true to one’s own interests. Yet Ben lacks the faculties to do this; he’s in too deep, beyond the point of no-return. He doesn’t know what it means to deal with painful emotions because at every point in his life he’s started feeling a trace of them, he rushes to his computer or smartphone to silence the pain.

He sinks into a depression that is pacified the only way he knows: by watching his favorite Netflix series and funny memes that his friend sends him. “HAHAHAHAA that’s literally the funniest thing I’ve seen all day” he replies over text with the same expression of nonchalant indifference on his face.

Our friend Ben is trying to figure out what it means to be human in the 21st century, in an age where we are bombarded with pornography, ads for other people’s dreams, political ideologies, and marketing methods that reveal our biggest insecurities.

Using the internet to solve personality disorders creates greater asymmetric dependence that leads to a greater fragility of our own character. We feel better deep down at the cost of relying less on our own mental faculties to cope with pain or discomfort.

When faced with cognitive dissonance, we struggle to make wise choices on our own that shape the destiny of our own lives. The more you peel back the layers of your own identity, the more of a semblance it has to something approximating a photo album browsing history of your life. The digital landscape is indistinguishable from your own true interests.

People go on retreats to get away from technology, and this feels refreshing for a good period of time. Yet to separate yourself from online media is to separate yourself entirely from civilization. We need it, just like we need Big Brother.

In a certain sense, it’s better to smile and take your pills. Did you notice that woman in the red dress on the subway the other day? Of course you didn’t, you were laughing at literally the funniest thing you’ve seen in your entire life, that’s what you replied over text to your friend, remember? Of course you don’t.

In a lot of ways, we can’t blame ourselves, since we seemingly walked into this conundrum like someone sleepwalking. It’s not that are going to entertain ourselves to death, yet the need to eliminate our insecurities and the methods we use to do so would make civilization collapse in the absence of social media.

I’ve written before that social media addiction is a symptom of a life without purpose; something that becomes exasperated the more you live your life online. We can extrapolate this to further understand that the more we live away from our phones, the more confidence we build in our own characters. I know this isn’t the ideal solution that people seek, after all, it’s nearly impossible to hold a stable-job in a medium to large city and have no presence online.

Understanding the role that technology plays in our lives is as important as understanding where our mind gravitates to on auto-pilot. Before we are aware of what we are doing, we are already looking at literally the funniest things we have ever seen on Reddit.

It’s not that Reddit is necessarily the problem in this case, or any other addictive outlet of social media. Over the past years, we’ve become more aware of our own human nature in the age of digital indulgence. We understand the addictive pull of online media and treat it more seriously. The age of mass communication tailors to our desires to hear and be heard; yet our minds have not adapted to this yet, and the noise becomes overbearing.

Meditation is one of the greatest tools we have to live more consciously in the digital age. Watching your thoughts, especially an urge to watch a YouTube video if you’re bored sitting on the toilet or about to go to sleep, can be extremely helpful. Observing the mind is an exercise, but it is the most important exercise to understanding the habits that lead to our addictive behaviors. This is aptly encapsulated by a quote from Lao Tzu:

Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

The internet helps us tremendously in many ways, but it can also ruin our lives. I was addicted to YouTube videos of near-death experiences for many years because they offered me a sense of excitement that I wasn’t experiencing in my own life. I felt trapped because I knew while I was watching these videos that I wasn’t happy; I was missing out on potential opportunities to grow as an individual beyond the digital interface.

It took me many years to develop habits that mitigated my addictive tendencies. In some instances, I relapsed with instagram or Reddit weeks after promising myself that I would work on consciously living without it.

Living consciously in the digital age is one of the greatest challenges to shaping your own destiny. It involves deciding who you are beyond the screen, and fighting for this identity. It is a difficult struggle, yet one that is ultimately critical to defining your own character.