We Are All Living On Digital Junk Food

When we think of geniuses who are addicted to something, we typically think of drugs. We think of Ernest Hemingway, who produced a number of literary classics and won a Nobel Prize while suffering from alcoholism. Kurt Cobain produced groundbreaking music with Nirvana before dying by suicide, exacerbated by his heavy heroin habit.

But by his own account, David Foster Wallace — who himself was seriously depressed, used cannabis and alcohol on and off throughout his life, and ended up dying by suicide—struggled most not with cannabis, or alcohol, but television.

“Like — I’ll watch five or six, I’ll zone out in front of the TV for five or six hours, and then I feel depressed and empty.” — David Foster Wallace

In Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, journalist David Lipsky asks Wallace if he has ever struggled with addiction like many other genius writers, and Wallace’s reply is that his most pernicious addiction is television. He goes on to explain that while he has used drugs on and off throughout his life, it’s television that plagues him most. Wallace refused to own a television in his home, restricting himself to watching TV at friend's houses and hotel rooms in order to limit his exposure.

Why did Wallace find television so hard to resist?

“One of the things that makes TV seductive is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It’s a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn’t require anything of me… I can see them, they can’t see me. And.. they’re there for me, and… I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive.” 
— David Foster Wallace

The full text of his quote about television addiction reads:

“Like — I’ll watch five or six, I’ll zone out in front of the TV for five or six hours, and then I feel depressed and empty. And I wonder why. Whereas if I eat candy for five or six hours, and then I feel sick, I know why.” — David Foster Wallace

In Wallace’s eyes, television was to human relationships like candy was to food: Candy is tasty, and it’s a fun snack on occasion, but if we eat candy for every meal, we are going to die.

It’s a powerful metaphor. The social urge is hard-wired into the human brain. This is clear by what happens when you take it away: The slew of negative health outcomes which have been linked to loneliness is astonishing, including loneliness raises your blood pressure, ruins your sleep, increases your risk for mental illness and suicide, and increases your chances of death by all causes. Loneliness may even be more deadly than obesity. And digital junk food (TV, video games, social media, online message boards, etc.) does not actually feed the part of your brain that needs social interaction, but it tricks your brain into thinking it has — exactly what candy does.

When Wallace said this, in the nineties, digital technology was in its infancy. Television was still broadcast during the day, episodes released one week at a time. Tivo was still a hot new thing. And Wallace was well aware of this:

“The technology’s gonna get better and better at doing what it does, which is seduce us into being incredibly dependent on it, so that advertisers can be more confident that we will watch their advertisements…the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money.

Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die. In a meaningful way, you’re going to die.” — David Foster Wallace

Reading this conversation between Lipsky and Wallace always gives me chills because of how ahead of his time Wallace was. At a time when most people viewed digital technology as an unmitigated good, Wallace was wise enough to see the problems it was going to cause decades before it did.

But most people didn’t foresee the problems, and now we are reaping the rewards. The latest generation of teenagers is the most socially isolated generation researchers have ever seen. Rates of depression and anxiety in teens are skyrocketing. Tens of millions of teenagers and adults are struggling with mental illness as we speak. The elderly are dying alone. None of the studies I’ve cited here point to digital junk food as the sole cause, but I find it difficult to believe they aren’t related.

That being said, the studies linking tech to negative outcomes are rolling in. Tech has been linked to lower reading comprehension, to reduced critical thinking skills, and to increased anxiety and depression. While digital technology has revolutionized the world, it’s become clear that not everything it changed was for the better.

“Hubris — technological, intellectual, political. We have no idea how little we know.” — Audra Wolfe

None of this is to say you should give up your smartphone and start using a rotary. For one thing, not every aspect of digital technology is like candy; the problem is the software and web services we use today, not the existence of software itself.

For another, just because something is like candy doesn’t mean we have to give it up entirely. Even though we recognize that candy is terrible for you, most of us don’t think you should go your whole life without ever eating a Snickers bar. Candy for every meal is a health nightmare, but candy in moderation is an enjoyable part of life. So how can we make sure to moderate our intake?

The first step to moderating any kind of intake, be it candy or passive digital activity, is to get an accurate picture of what our intake is.

When it comes to dieting, that usually means keeping a food journal or something equally annoying, but monitoring your digital activity is much easier: simply set up a time tracker. Apple now offers its tracker Screen Time on all its operating systems, and on Android Google offers Digital Wellness. For those on Windows, there is RescueTime. Set up whatever time tracker you need and let it collect data for a week. After that week is up, you’ll have an accurate-to-the-minute picture of what kind of things you do with your digital time.

You may think your digital life is under control and that you don’t need to do this, but I can almost promise you you’re wrong. Most people I speak to feel the same way — but after I challenge them to a week of time tracking, they’re forced to eat their words. The time trackers reveal they are spending 2x, 3x, 4x as much time consuming digital junk as they thought.

If we want to be healthy and whole, we need to cut out the digital junk food and replace it with things that actually meet our needs — things like pursuing meaningful hobbies and spending quality time with loved ones. We aren’t going to be able to meet our needs any other way.

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Interested in getting your digital consumption under control? Here are some resources for you: