Why You’re Always Tired, Anxious, and Unmotivated (Hint: It’s in Your Pocket) | Cal Newport

The Los Angeles Angels baseball team recently implemented a strict new policy: no smartphones in the clubhouse. When the news broke, sports commentators and fans immediately assumed they knew the reason. Baseball is a game of discipline and focus; surely, the management wanted to eliminate digital distractions to keep players’ heads in the game.

However, when manager Ron Washington clarified the decision, the reasoning was different. The ban wasn’t about focus—baseball players are already masters of focus during long, tech-free games. It was about community. The players were scrolling through their phones instead of talking to one another. The cost of the technology wasn't just distraction; it was the loss of team cohesion.

This specific baseball rule highlights a general issue afflicting our current discourse surrounding phones. We often ask, "is this app bad for me?" when we should be asking, "what am I losing by using it?" If you feel constantly tired, anxious, and unmotivated, the answer may lie in distinguishing between the direct damage your phone causes and the rich life experiences it quietly steals away.

Key Takeaways

• Distinguish between Primary and Secondary Harms: Primary harms are direct negatives (like brain rot or anxiety from doom-scrolling), while secondary harms are the positive activities you sacrifice to spend time on a screen.
• The "Usefulness" Trap: Just because an app has a specific utility doesn't justify its presence if it displaces higher-value activities.
• Autonomy is the Goal: The unease many feel regarding technology stems from a loss of control over how they spend their time, not just the content they consume.
• The Solution is Subtraction: Fixing your digital life often requires removing the digital influence to rediscover what you value, rather than simply moderating your usage.

The Misleading Focus on Primary Harms

When we discuss the dangers of smartphones, the conversation usually revolves around what we call primary harms. These are the direct, negative consequences caused by the act of using the device. In recent years, public discourse has become obsessed with these issues.

Common examples of primary harms include:

• Algorithmically curated outrage: Content designed to radicalize users or spike blood pressure.
• Mental health spirals: Teenagers getting lost in damaging rabbit holes on Instagram or TikTok.
• "Brain Rot": The cognitive fog caused by excessive use of highly stimulating, short-form content.
• Cognitive fragmentation: The exhaustion that comes from constantly switching contexts between work and notifications, leaving you in a persistent state of reduced cognitive capacity.

While these issues are serious and likely worsening, focusing exclusively on them allows us to avoid a more uncomfortable truth. It suggests that if we could just "fix" the apps—install better moderators, change the CEO, or tweak the algorithm—we could return to a digital utopia. This mindset ignores the more profound damage phones inflict on the human experience.

The Silent Cost: Secondary Harms

The concept of secondary harms refers to what you lose when your time and attention are monopolized by a screen. Even if the content you are consuming is benign or even educational, the cost is the activity that is not happening.

In the case of the Los Angeles Angels, the primary harm of the phone wasn't significant; players weren't checking Instagram while batting. The secondary harm was that the "in-between" moments—the banter, the strategy discussions, the bonding—were being deleted. The team was becoming a group of isolated individuals.

The Loss of Autonomy

In 2017, while researching Digital Minimalism, it became clear that the source of people's unease wasn't just about "screen time" numbers. It was a deeper sense of losing control.

"The source of our unease is not evidence in these thin-sliced case studies but instead becomes visible only when we confront the thicker reality of how these technologies as a whole have managed to expand beyond the minor roles for which we initially adopted them. Increasingly they dictate how we behave and how we feel and somehow coerce us to use them more than we think is healthy often at the expense of other activities we find more valuable."

The anxiety many feel today comes from a lack of autonomy. When you tune out during your child's bath time or interrupt a beautiful sunset to document it for a virtual audience, you are not making an intentional choice. You are reacting to a compulsion. The secondary harm is the erosion of a life lived with intention.

Escaping the "Useful vs. Useless" Binary

A major barrier to addressing these secondary harms is the "useful vs. useless" argument. Technology defenders often claim that if a tool offers any benefit—keeping up with old friends, finding recipes, reading news—it is therefore valid and necessary.

This is the wrong metric. The question is not "Is this tool useful?" The question must be: "Does this tool support the life I value, or does it displace it?"

Consider the "alcoholic" analogy. Focusing solely on primary harms (like making the app safer) is like an alcoholic saying, "If we just reduce the alcohol content of the beer, I'll be fine." It avoids the core issue of the drinking itself. Similarly, if you spend three hours a day on a "safe" and "moderated" app, you are still losing three hours of your life that could have been spent on fitness, learning, or connection.

Case Study: The Life You Could Be Living

To understand the magnitude of secondary harms, we have to look at what happens when they are removed. Consider the case of Leo, an international student at NYU. A year ago, Leo was struggling with his grades (3.6 GPA), was clinically obese (220 lbs), and felt isolated. He realized that while social media wasn't actively "radicalizing" him, it was sucking away the time and energy required to live a real life.

Leo decided to remove the distraction. The results of eliminating these secondary harms were profound:

• Physical Health: He began walking and running, dropping from 220 lbs to 140 lbs.
• Academic Performance: His GPA rose to a 3.9, despite taking difficult courses like organic chemistry, because he could actually study without distraction.
• Enrichment: He began reading books during "dead time" on the subway, joined research labs, and became president of a medical journal.

Leo realized that no one cared if he was on social media, but he cared about the life he was missing. By removing the digital drain, he didn't just gain time; he gained a new identity.

Conclusion: Defining Your Values First

If you feel tired, anxious, and unmotivated, do not wait for Silicon Valley to fix their algorithms. The solution is not a better app; it is a clear definition of what matters to you.

Start by identifying what gives you a deep, rich sense of value—whether that is physical fitness, real-world community, learning a skill, or simply being present with your family. Once you know what you value, assess your technology against those goals. If a device is getting in the way of the life you want to live, curtail it. Put fences around it. Remove it completely if necessary.

The primary harms of technology are real, but the secondary harms are what empty our lives of meaning. Don't let what is in your pocket steal what is in your heart.