Number of words: 268

This is exacerbated by the fact that our primitive brains’ ever rotten sense of geography: if we see footage of a massacre somewhere far off, our minds don’t instructively think, that was thousands of miles away. They believe that it must have been close at hand, within the scope of a neolithic human’s wanderings. We try to learn everything we can about this nearby thread. The continuous simulation causes continuous stress. Some psychologists believe that the effect is so strong that we should limit our news-watching to only 30 minutes a day or risk developing anxiety-related depression.

Beyond such immediate impacts, our info-drenched culture may ultimately stop our species evolving further by killing our desire to switch off the screens and do anything purposeful. The danger lies in the increasingly seductive lure of virtual reality, which provides short-cuts that enable our brains to experience exciting biological cues, such as attractive and willing mates, that they have been built to go out to find in the real world. Our thrill-seeking circuits no longer have to leave the sofa to get their kicks. And our subconscious, instinctive brains don’t care tuppence that these stimuli only exist as pixels. They don’t even care that we consciously know it’s cheap fakery. They still get turned on just as much. This explains why people increasingly prefer to watch porn rather than pursue sexual intimacy in a complex human relationship, play virtual video sports rather than practise real-world athletics and watch Friends rather than spend time with friends.

Excerpted from pages 27 of Enough: breaking free from the world of excess by John Naish