I do believe a lot of the problems we face today are at least partially caused by the dissonance between our curent environment [and by extension society] and that in wich most of our biology and instincts were formed, and we did have a lot more situations in which the luxury of long-term thinking wasn't present. That being said, things like social anxiety for one don't seem to be an example of such situatons. Unless you subscribe to Rousseau's et al ideia of men as pretty much not being a social animals back then [even though I don't think there's much room for believing that nowadays], social relations would have been every bit as important back then. Avoiding those because of a focus on the short term might have been even deadlier. Even then, though, the whole nature of said relations and of our needs would have made for a very different dynamic, which might negate a lot of the reasons why you might not want or could even be able to not go on "family functions", or the layers and expectations and what not taht are now present when asking someone out, for example. So even though I don't think it all boils down just to short- vs long-term, I believe a lot of these "anxieties" have to do with this sort of dissonance as I stated earlier, and maybe the fact that we're not as equiped to deal with those coupled with the fact that we have the option not to might lead a lot of people into the sort of short term mentality you're talking about.
And yeah, it does cause problems :P
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