Why Does More Control Make People Anxious?

Anna Lembke argues that more levers for microcontrol over daily life have made people more anxious, fearful, lonely, and bored. Humans evolved over millions of years to use agency to reduce uncertainty in a chaotic natural world where famine, flood, and fire constantly threatened survival. Science and technology now give unprecedented control over that environment, which would seem to make everyone feel much safer.

The same drive that once felt good and adaptive now shows up as control at the micro level, including inside a virtual space engineered so people can shape reality. More people, especially young people, are gripped by paralyzing anxiety because so many choices and so much control make them fear missing out on their best lives. When things do not work out perfectly, shame follows. People feel they only have themselves to blame, and self-loathing grows. More people are harming themselves, and young people are ending their own lives after minor failures a generation ago would have treated as tolerable, such as social rejection or an academic reprimand. Mistakes ricochet around the world, and curated images and narratives of perfect lives stay on display.

The paradox of control is that so many more ways to optimize leave people feeling they should engineer perfection.