Remember when we just had to worry about doomscrolling making us anxious and distracted? Cute times. Innocent times. Times that are now officially over.
Manoush Zomorodi, the reporter, podcast host, and author who previously made us feel personally attacked with her book Bored and Brilliant - which laid out exactly how technology is wrecking our mental health - is back. And this time she's brought receipts about your body.
From the neck up to the whole deal
Her new book, Body Electric, is a full-scale investigation into how technology is affecting us physically. Not just the brain fog and the attention span of a golden retriever - we're talking the whole human machine. The project is a collaboration between NPR and Columbia University Medical Center, which means this isn't just vibes and hot takes. There are actual scientists involved, and honestly that makes it scarier.
Where Bored and Brilliant asked "what is your phone doing to your mind?", Body Electric is asking the far more unsettling follow-up question: "okay but also what is it doing to literally everything else?"
Why this actually matters
The conversation around tech and health has been stuck in the mental health lane for a while now - screen time bad, blue light bad, social media bad, we get it. But the physical dimension is way less talked about, which is wild when you think about how much time most of us spend hunched over a glowing rectangle every single day.
Zomorodi has spent her career making complicated tech topics feel genuinely accessible and relevant rather than preachy, which is a rare and valuable skill. If anyone can make you care about what your posture, your sleep, your nervous system, and your general corporeal existence are going through right now, it's probably her.
According to reporting from The Verge, the book picks up directly from where her first title left off - treating this as a continuing investigation rather than a standalone hot take. That kind of sustained, methodical focus on a topic is exactly what a subject this big deserves.
So if you were feeling smug about deleting TikTok that one time, you may want to sit down. Actually - no. Don't sit down. Sitting is apparently also a problem. You'll find out why in the book.
