I'm a psychoanalyst. This is what technology is doing to us

We've lost the capacity to feel the grief that technology brings.

- Steven Barrie-Anthony

For the vast majority of my psychotherapy patients, the gravitational pull of phones and social media alters the most important aspects of who they are, their relationships with others and how they move through the world.

This is true for most of us. Our uptake of technology has been so rapid that we are losing the ability to notice how it feels to live this way. Occasionally, in therapeutic conversations, a patient can get in touch with these feelings. It often looks like grief.

I increasingly see in my practice how people are beginning to feel that technology has pulled them away, again and again, from what matters most. Perhaps tech has interrupted their creative lives or their emotional growth.

A pattern familiar to many of us is how these distractions disrupt connection with others. Talking to the kids at dinner and then glancing away. Feeling the pull of the phone and also that whispering uneasiness.

"Darn it, why do I do that?"

That's the sentiment patients express. Anger often comes first. Then we get to the hurt beneath it. All these moments not actually unseen, but noticed and ignored leave this residue of grief. All these turnings away.

As we talk, the sadness opens out in ripples and swells. It's remarkable when people allow themselves to feel the grief, because tech tends to distract us not just from moments of connection, but also from the sorrow of missing these moments.

A FOG

I've long thought about technology's human impact in my roles as a psychoanalyst and a scholar of religion, and formerly as a tech journalist and research director.