According to biologist Richard Dawkins, the rise in mental illness in developed countries could be attributed to the “incredible speed” of technological innovation.
The 83-year-old British author and evolutionary scientist has proposed the theory that human evolution has been too slow to keep up with the environment, creating an imbalance that disrupts our sense of well-being.
He unveiled the theory during a podcast appearance on Sunday, reiterating years of research linking social media use to depression among young people and other modern ills.
“A lot of people are worried that the pace of change is so fast that we’re no longer adapting,” Dawkins told podcast listeners. “And that’s a concern.”
But despite these seemingly common-sense concerns, the relationship between technological progress and human well-being remains a hotly debated topic, with one study led by the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute finding no “conclusive evidence” linking the two.
According to biologist Richard Dawkins, the rise in mental illness in developed countries can be attributed to the “extraordinary speed” of technological innovation (above).
The unconventional British author and evolutionary scientist, 83, unveiled the theory on the TRIGGERnometry podcast this Sunday, and it echoes years of research showing that use of big tech companies and social media is linked to depression and other modern ills in young people.
“Certainly the rate at which we are evolving genetically is tiny compared to the rate at which we are evolving non-genetically, culturally,” Dawkins told the hosts of the TRIGGERnometry podcast.
“And many of the mental illnesses that people suffer from may be due to the fact that we live in an environment that is constantly changing and unpredictable,” the biologist added. “That was not the case in our ancestors.”
However, Dawkins has been reluctant to fully endorse the theory because he believes cultural trends regarding gender, religious beliefs and other political topics run counter to evidence-based scientific reasoning.
“I actually think our resilience is remarkable,” said the author of groundbreaking books such as “The Selfish Gene” (1976) and “The God Delusion” (2006).
“Most of us seem to be coping pretty well with the incredible rate of change that has occurred in my lifetime,” Dawkins said.
A large-scale international study published last November found that Clinical Psychology The journal report, which used data from two million people aged between 15 and 89, appears to support Dawkins’ optimistic claim.
The researchers, who studied two million subjects across 168 countries, found that the association was smaller than would be expected if the internet and online social media were causing widespread psychological harm.
Professor Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute, who led the research, published a similar study on Facebook use last year.
The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open ScienceHe and his co-authors used data on the incidence of anxiety, depression and self-harm in nearly 200 countries from 2000 to 2019.
Well-being was assessed using data from face-to-face and telephone surveys administered by local interviewers, and mental health was assessed using statistical estimates of depression, anxiety and self-harm.
“We searched hard for ‘smoking gun’ linking technology to health but couldn’t find any,” Prybylski said.
A large-scale study published last November using data from two million people aged 15 to 89 appears to support Dawkins’ optimism, finding a smaller-than-expected link between whether the internet is causing widespread psychological harm.
“I actually think we have remarkable resilience,” says Dawkins, who wrote landmark books such as “The Selfish Gene” in 1976. “Most of us seem to be coping pretty well with the incredible rate of change that has taken place in my lifetime.”
“The common belief that the internet and mobile phones are having an across-the-board negative impact on health and mental health is probably not accurate,” Prybylski said.
“Certainly, there may be smaller but more significant things going on, but broad claims that the internet is having a globally negative impact should be treated with a very high level of skepticism,” the Oxford academics concluded.
However, his research contradicts several studies that claim to show that social media and this era of disruptive technological change is worsening the mental health of not only young people but also middle-aged and millennials.
Dawkins said that human genetic evolution has not occurred as quickly as cultural evolution. Above is a model of a DNA strand.
During his podcast appearance, Dawkins expressed more direct concerns about other aspects of the evolutionary impact of human technology, such as climate change and basic self-reliance in the face of a new dark age.
“The internet is a big change, a huge change,” he noted. “We’ve adapted to it incredibly quickly.”
“If we lose electricity, if we suddenly lose the technology that we’ve become accustomed to,” Dawkins worried, saying humanity might not even be able to “begin” to adapt in time without massive societal disruption and death.
The biologist held similar views about global warming due to climate change, but cautioned that this was not his area of expertise.
“This is probably a dangerous problem and it needs to be solved,” Dawkins said on the podcast.
But as someone who has studied the evolution of a wide variety of wildlife species throughout his illustrious career, he commented more forcefully about the impact humans have on other life on Earth.
“Man-made extinction is just as bad as any other extinction. I think it’s a tragedy,” he said.
