For all its clear advantages, one big drawback to the digital age is our exposure to ubiquitous distractions — from our endless need to check stuff on Google, to the perpetual stream of WhatsApp messages, to our impulsive additions to our Amazon baskets. Although it’s too soon to know just what long-term impact living in the digital bubble will have on our brains, recent psychological research suggests that heightened social media usage is linked to deficits in concentration, empathy, and social skills, as well as increases in narcissism and life dissatisfaction. And the more drastic idea that our inability to be offline may have detrimental intellectual and cultural consequences for society is now less unusual than it was once.