June 2008

“Something profound seems to be happening to the human brain,” says Susan Greenfield, Oxford professor and head of the Royal Institution of Great Britian, “and what really worries me is that we could be sleepwalking into a new world of technology without even considering what it is doing to our brains.”

Hours spent in front of computer screens and TV everyday increase dopamine production in our brains, she contends, and other scientists suggest that these higher dopamine levels can result in changes in how the brain works.

Are the changes good or bad? Perhaps a little of both. On the negative side, shorter attention spans and being more risk-averse are some of the changes that she’s noted. This might be playing into afflictions that are on the rise in young people, such as obesity, gambling, drinking and violence.

She adds, speaking of the generations attached to screens, “They will be people who are more hedonistic and tend to live for the moment, a life that is more sensory and less cognitive.”

On the positive side, some people can actually benefit from being less cautious or more risk-averse, she admits. She’s not against the use of technology. She strongly advocates research and large-scale studies to determine how technology affects our brains. So far, all we seem to have is mostly anecdotal evidence; we need some science to back up our observations.

Parents do not want to wait five to ten years for science to provide an unequivocal answer. There seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence to convince any parent that too much screen time isn’t good for kids.

“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” That’s how Nicholas Carr describes how heavy use of the Net has changed his reading ability. “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” he says. He also has anecdotes from his friends — including a medical blogger, and a literature major — who say that they’ve experienced the same changes in reading habits.

“I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)”

Even though we are on the Internet, we’re still reading. It’s just a web browser instead of a book, and some studies suggest that kids are reading more because of the Internet. While that may be true, online reading is less focused, people read short snippets before they click on a link and are zipped off to read another snippet, and there are a lot of distractions online.

Reading differently results in us thinking differently. We’re not reading as deeply. We aren’t as engaged and we’re easily distracted. This new reading style favors efficiency and immediacy rather than depth, reflection, and contemplation.

So what’s the takeaway from all of this? Like wine and chocolate, the Internet is good for you, but only if you use it moderately.

References:

• Is Google Making Us Stupid?, by Nicholas Carr for The Atlantic.
• Society hard-wired for a fall, by Pete Wilson for The Australian.

Hat Tip to Kevin Arthur who brought one of the articles to my attention.

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