About the event
This is planned to be a pre-read event.
If you would like to attend this event virtually by Zoom, please contact Drew Johnson at Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas.
Abstract
Digital distractions are omnipresent. Notifications, emails, Twitter posts, YouTube recommendations, Google Ads, texts, Slack messages, Venmo requests, biofeedback: such technologies are designed to place historically unprecedented demands on attention. Because these changes were often implemented with the “move fast, break things” ethos of Silicone Valley, it is unclear whether digital distractions are changing our minds for good or ill. This depends on two philosophical questions. One is descriptive: what kinds of mental activities do digital distractions generate? Another is normative: what kinds of mental activities contribute to a good life? Answers to these questions often come as a package.
The most common package of views is what I call the “inattention picture”. Descriptively, on this picture, digital distractions lower our capacity to focus and pay attention (Bhargava & Velasquez, 2021; Hendricks & Vestergaard, 2019; Newport, 2016; Williams, 2018; Zuboff, 2019). Normatively, this is a problem for instrumental reasons––attention helps us get things done––and/or intrinsic reasons––focused attention is good for agents with minds like ours. One version of the inattention picture says that digital distractions are a kind of technologically-mediated mind-wandering (Bruineberg & Fabry, 2021; Gazzaley & Rosen, 2016). Like other forms of mind-wandering, digital distractions therefore interfere with a wide variety of tasks––school (Dontre, 2021; Smallwood et al., 2007; Wammes et al., 2016), work (Orhan et al., 2021), driving (Baldwin et al., 2017; Caird et al., 2014; Yanko & Spalek, 2014), and working at the hospital (Fiorinelli et al., 2021). Proponents of the inattention picture disagree over details. But they share a core descriptive assumption––digital technologies make us more distracted––and normative assumption––attention helps us flourish more than distraction.
Yet both assumptions may be based on an oversimple view of distraction. Descriptively, digital technologies may not only make us more distracted; they may also change how we are distracted. Intuitively, digital distractions are often not akin to mind-wandering, which idly meanders from topic to topic (Irving, 2021). Rather, digital distractions often encourage us to get “stuck” on emotionally salient topics such as “moral outrage porn” (Nguyen & Williams, 2020) and “doom-scrolling” (Roose, 2020). This may be due to recommendation algorithms that aim to maximize “meaningful engagement”––that is, time spent on app. Those mechanisms likely prioritize sticky thought, which holds our attention far better than mind-wandering. This is worrying, because mind-wandering is a form of “spontaneous” thought that can support creativity (Baird et al., 2012; Christoff et al., 2016; Gable et al., 2019; Irving et al., 2022) and exploration (Mittner et al., 2016; Shepherd, 2019; Sripada, 2018). In contrast, excess levels of sticky thought are associated with mood disorders like anxiety, depression, and brooding (Christoff et al., 2016; Kaiser et al., 2015; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008; Raffaelli et al., 2021). In a slogan, I hypothesize that digital distractions create a spontaneity deficit.
Philosophical reflection on the mental good life bears not only on abstract questions about the nature and problems of digital distraction, but also applied questions about how to solve these problems. Current solutions often target the problem of inattention and thus offer strategies to make us more focused (Gazzaley & Rosen, 2016), more productive (Vanderkam, 2010), or deeper workers (Newport, 2016). Consider that “productivity” technologies are sometimes presented as a salve to digital distraction because they allow us to militantly control our attention and time (Vanderkam, 2010). These solutions may well help us be more attentive. But in doing so, they likely worsen the spontaneity deficit. For productivity technologies encourage you to reduce mental “waste time”, where we are without aim or purpose. But those are precisely the contexts that let our minds wander.