How the internet trapped us inside our own heads

A review of Matthew B. Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head

Nowhere to turn.
(Image credit: (Illustration Works/Corbis))

Imagine for a moment the reaction of someone from a different era to a front-page story from last Sunday's New York Times — the one titled (in the print edition), "Abuse of Attention Deficit Pills Graduates Into the Workplace."

This person would learn from the article that large numbers of early 21st-century American children have trouble attending to their schoolwork, and that to address this problem we medicate them with stimulants. Next this reader would learn that some of these kids, and many others with no diagnosable condition, go on to use and abuse the pills in college — and that the trend has now extended into people's careers, allowing them to work absurdly long hours, late into the night and on into the morning, all in order to achieve unnatural levels of productivity, which they think necessary to secure positive evaluations and promotions in their jobs. Finally, there are the other pharmaceuticals — the sedatives and anti-depressants — that these people often need to help them fend off the resulting waves of exhaustion, anxiety, and depression.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.