Digital technologies and evolutionary mismatch: Harming, but also healing mental health.

2025/11/03 by Tanay Katiyar, Adam Hunt, Amy Orben +2 · 2 voices · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Digital Mental Health Interventions #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Impact of Technology on Adolescents

paper · doi:10.1037/rev0000593

openalex created_date 2025/11/03 · openalex publication_date 2025/11/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

. Although aspects of CMC may indeed represent such evolutionary mismatches, this relationship may, however, be complicated by (a) a failure to contextualize the negative mental health effects of CMC against broader societal factors (e.g., family nuclearization) which are plausible preexisting evolutionary mismatches themselves; and (b) ignoring the positive effects of CMC in mitigating these mismatches. In this article, we propose a perspective that addresses these limitations, suggesting that this serves as an antidote to the overpathologization of novel behaviors facilitated by CMC. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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Discussions

• Interesting article about arguments that social media, texting, etc. are evolutionary mismatches with humans. My take-away: these arguments are pretty weak or over-simplified. I think we need to look [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• To read further, here's the link to the open-access version of the article: doi.org/10.1037/rev0... [bsky, 2 points, 2 comments]

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