With Your Smartphone, Fear Is Never Far Away

In a blink of an evolutionary eye, radio and television then give way to smartphones—all of the world’s threats in your hand, all the time. “The smartphone, especially, more than pretty much any other technology that existed before, is constant,” says Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology. “For many people, at least, notifications come and updates come pretty much nonstop. It’s a very far cry from picking up the daily paper,” let alone the town square. 

“[The] modern world is clearly nothing like the world that developed our fear response,” says Abigail Marsh, an associate professor psychology at Georgetown University. “We are no longer getting information that is representative of the actual world because we’re learning about the world from all these unnatural resources. Our brain is coming up with heuristics about how likely events are. It’s not built to take information from social media [and mass media].” Marsh says the availability heuristic helps us make it all seem scarier, because we’re not equipped to provide ourselves with the appropriate denominators for frightening statistics. What can smartphone makers do? First, a little offense. “Just change the algorithms a little bit,” says Marsh. “Force stories that are good up the rankings.” Then, consider a little defense. Perhaps a filter for fearful content.