Bottomless Media: How Screen-Scrolling Fuels An Anxious World
By: Aimee Dyamond
Tags: Digital, Attention Economy, UX, Psychology, Human Behavior

We know how we’re distracted. But what are we distracted from?

There will always be new ways to distract human attention. It is not the new technology itself, says Furedi, but our inability to create meaning from the innovations and changes that unfold around us, of which we are inextricably part. We confuse our inability to make meaning with distractibility. Distractibility — aided by scrolling and its many digital derivatives, like autoplay, compulsive notification checking and multi-tab, algorithmized browsing —is cyclical. Not checking the phone results in anxiety, and anxiety is relieved by checking the phone. The cycle is maintained not only by the dopamine-fueled reward-seeking approach, but also by anxiety avoidance.

But what are we anxious about?

You could say it’s the state of the world — divisive politics, systemic racism, climate change, terrorism, economic slumps, widening global inequality, surveillance capitalism, the pandemic. It must be all that, right? Because if you’re not concerned (or angered, dismayed, disheartened, etc.) about at least one of those issues, you must be dangerously out of touch and lacking empathy for the human condition, right?

Most of us are anxious and uncertain; most of us have, at some point this year, felt bleak about the future. But perhaps the source of our anxiety is simpler, far more shallow than what we want to believe. We want these issues to give us proof of our own moral goodness; being aroused in any way about them is a sign that we care about something bigger than ourselves.

But if you, like me, live in a developed, democratic society where your basic needs are taken care of, the only tangible thing you’re anxious about on a moment-to-moment basis is the fact that your phone is unattended. There’s nothing else in your immediate environment that justifies your acute anxiety!

It’s difficult to recognize that the source of anxiety might be closer to us than we think and not necessarily attributed to grand-scale issues like climate change. We should be willing to consider that our moment-to-moment dis-ease might be related to our devices’ presence in our environments. That’s it.

Photo by Jonatan Pie on Unsplash

The Curated Present

Modern humans (important caveat: I refer to those living in societies where food, shelter and basic medical care are available and there is no immediate threat to life) live in a world where many actions we take on a given day don’t yield any immediate benefits. We take these actions in the hope of a future reward. For example, you take a walk every evening to maintain heart health and protect yourself against developing osteoporosis when you’re older. We live with constant awareness of the future, knowing that what we do today will have an effect later in life, whether beneficial or deleterious. Psychologists call this the delayed-return environment.

Historically, humans existed more-or-less for the moment, each day a cutthroat game of survival to fulfil basic needs and evade immediate dangers. Today, we’re almost guaranteed a longer life. Provided life isn’t abruptly terminated by an accident or unexpected illness, and that we take the best self-preserving actions along the way, most of us can expect to live well into older age.

By our very natures we don’t focus entirely on the present. We’re always conscious of the future and the uncertainty it brings. When our minds wander there, we need something to rein them in. So we start scrolling. Instantly, the mind anchors itself to a tangible present, a present that takes the form of live, real-time digital stuff, the distraction-fodder of that endless reel that yanks your wayfaring, anxious mind away from the indeterminate future to a numb, charming version of the present filled with memes and echo chambers and happy notifications that pop up cartoonishly whenever you log in. This curated present is far easier to deal with.

Photo by Cristian Dina from Pexels

There is an invisible battle underway: the battle for directing and re-directing human attention. This animated short, featuring lecture material from former Google employee James Williams, highlights the battle for human attention as “defining political and moral challenge of our time”. You and I are caught up in (and most likely contributing to) the endless spool of stuff that runs across our screens, an ecosystem of content which algorithms curates and on which corporate advertising depends.

Whenever you reach for your device to relieve the mounting anxiety, you become distracted from thinking about why you’re anxious in the first place. Your awareness shifts away from truly contemplating the disproportionate power this heavily designed, algorithm-driven technology has over your life, which, if you’re living in a free society, you might consider relatively autonomous and endowed with all the liberties expected of a democratic society. Distracted by the perpetual digital tombola concealed inside your phone, you don’t get a chance to consider that perhaps it is this very libertarian existence, and the delayed-return environment that accompanies it, that’s at the heart of your anxiety.

Let the Algorithm Take You

As a member of the generation who grew up on the cusp of traditional and digital media (as in, I listened to tapes, watched films on VHS and was part of the first cohort of young people to use Facebook), I’ve noticed a fundamental change in the way we use the Internet today. In the early days of connectivity, we went online with a specific question in mind, searching for an answer. The Internet itself was limited: we had dial-up, which cost a fortune, so I was only allowed thirty minutes a day. I had to make the most of that time. Infinite, leisurely scrolling wasn’t possible because we didn’t yet have smart devices with responsive interfaces.

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Our new behaviours aren’t quite as goal-directed.

Consider how often you might open Netflix, not really intending to watch anything specific, and let the platform show you what you need. Or you’re idly scrolling through your Facebook feed, not really searching for anything in particular, but hoping that something you need, be it informational, entertaining, distracting, salacious, might appear.

Through infinite scrolling, we resign ourselves to the algorithm without realizing it.

Some of the most biggest platforms on the planet use an infinite scroll mechanism, an endlessly loading feed of content that constantly updates itself, tailored to the user using powerful machine learning capability. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all rely on the infinite scrolling principle to keep their users scrolling endlessly down what might be equated to hundreds of miles of content. If you were to unfurl it and lay it all side by side, it may well wrap itself several times around the Earth.

Scrolling isn’t so much navigation as it is aimless wandering, stumbling through a sea of content. Unlike its namesake — the ancient papyrus scrolls used by Roman officials to record the activities of the Empire — there is no true end to the digital scroll, neither is there intention, goal-directedness. We don’t decide what we see next as we move ours thumbs obediently up the screen, pushing the infinite, instantly-gratifying Internet up towards the top of our phones. The algorithm does.

Media Without Boundaries

When I was younger, media had boundaries. You could physically touch its vessels: vinyl LPs had a limited playtime; audio cassettes whose sticky, magnetic tape seemed to go forever but eventually reached an end, and VHS tapes whose finite amount of recording time necessitated make that difficult decision about whether or not to tape over something because you’d run out of space. Before internet streaming, going to the cinema, you had only one ticket to see one movie. Television programming ran on its own schedule, not ours. When my favorite show aired once a week, I spent the preceding days in giddy anticipation of the next instalment. Even when it came to that eagerly awaited slot, we endured commercial breaks every fifteen minutes.

Photo by Shelly Still from Pexels

As annoying as these interruptions were, they forced us off the couch for short intervals to do something else, like finish a quick chore or speak to a family member. Television viewing simply wasn’t on demand like it is today. Now there’s no need to find something else to do. Our media consumption is rarely interrupted, nor is there an end in sight. Streaming services give us a bottomless supply of media. A subscription to one is a ticket to everything.

Anticipation can’t truly exist when the time between desire and wish fulfilment is so brief. Platforms like Netflix have eliminated the need to wait for the next instalment of a story. With entire seasons uploaded at once, there’s really no reason not to watch it all in a single sitting. You’ve no sooner finished watching a series, there’s a tantalizing new feature uploaded on the platform, teasing you to click Play. Keen to escape the anxiety for which you can’t easily identify a true source, you sit back and allow autoplay to take over your life for the next couple of hours. One of the fundamental differences between media consumption a generation ago and media consumption today is the knowledge of uninterrupted supply.

The internet hosts a virtually unlimited amount of content. It’s available all the time, anywhere. But the infinite, uninterrupted supply of media we have access to isn’t the important part — it’s our knowledge of it. We know that behind every click, at the edge of the fold just behind what’s visible, after ever swipe, behind that ‘next episode’ button is more content, and more rewards. It’s a door behind a door behind a door, and we can’t stop opening them all. The guaranteed presence of something novel behind every click is the binge factor that’s built into the very fabric of Netflix’s user interface.