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Is technology harming our brains?
- wmlive 3y ago»Technology and our reliance on it is limiting our critical thinking capabilities and ultimately harming our brains — but can we stop it?«
- resonious 3y agoSo the title's question was answered right in the subtitle. Nice.
- turtleyacht 3y agoNo, not technology--the choice of software.
- strict9 3y agoNot that my brain has completely gone downhill — I’m still smart and feel motivated, but I have noticed my concentration and memory are not what they used to be. It’s because technology is harming our brains. I sympathize with the author and feel this to an extent, but maybe this has more to do with aging than it does using apps and addictive social media. Memorization is a lot easier when you're young versus when you're older. Though I'm sure it does play a part--spending most of your time on social media leads to not using some parts of your brain. You've got to use it to keep it working properly, just like muscle.
- trinsic2 3y agoI think maybe the author has a point. It does seem like the quantity of people are suffering from memory issues has increased lately.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoIf we're speaking very recently, some of this may be due to the covid isolation. Chronic stress, reduced physical activity and subclinical depression is quite the cocktail for attention and memory difficulties.
- lrem 3y agoDon’t forget the virus itself. It is not gentle on the neurons.
- 11235813213455 3y agoChronic stress, reduced physical activity is quite related to technologies too
- kzrdude 3y agoIt could be a combination of stress and lack of sleep, which of course in turn, could be caused by technological factors for example. Then sometimes I have to wonder though, do we have realistic expectations on memory? There's just so many systems (at work) and so much stuff, maybe we're overloading ourselves past realistic expectations?
- safety1st 3y agoNumerous studies suggest that excessive social media usage can negatively affect cognitive abilities, memory retention, and sustained focus.
- anon23432343 3y agoThe internet or modern technology is not only social media... Its like saying a books are only cheesy romantic 5 penny books...
- 11235813213455 3y agoit's not really about the content, but about the medium. A book, whatever its content is relaxing to read & interact with
- anon23432343 3y agoWhat? This is the dumbest thing I have read on HN in a while. Do you want me really to write down some books were you should not be relaxed?
- maximus-decimus 3y agoI would start with It. There's nothing quite as relaxing as a horror novel about a shapeshifting space clown murdering children.
- mikem170 3y agoBut a book like that is something that you sink into, the author draws you into their fictional world, over a period of hours. That's quite different that 45 seconds of outrage the on to the next click-bait, isn't it? The attention span required seems quite different between the two. I assume that's why people are concerned that things like social networks may be detrimental to focused thinking. EDIT: I agree that a book like "It", full of suspense, would not ordinarily be considered relaxing to read.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> I’ve been thinking about this time recently because my focus, learning, and memory were all amazing, but I don’t feel that way anymore. Not that my brain has completely gone downhill — I’m still smart and feel motivated, but I have noticed my concentration and memory are not what they used to be. What if we apply this to a more macro scope? Human evolution. It would be bad if we stopped relying on our brains (hey, we have great AI!), brainpower stopped developing over time, brainpower languishes, humans lose intelligence.
- paxys 3y agoAlso known as – getting old.
- nonethewiser 3y agoExcept on an evolutionary timescale.
- renegade-otter 3y agoNicholas Carr wrote about this almost two decades ago. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-goog... I refer to it in my post: https://renegadeotter.com/2023/08/24/getting-your-focus-back.html https://renegadeotter.com/2023/08/24/getting-your-focus-back...
- Turing_Machine 3y agoThis discussion has been going on for a helluva lot longer than two decades. "And in this instance, you who are the father of letters [i.e., the Egyptian god Thoth], from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours [i.e., writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality." Attributed to Socrates, from Phaedrus, circa 370 BC.
- spacebacon 3y ago[flagged]
- meiraleal 3y agoIf you can't read the article you should help the community and refrain from comment. We are here to discuss the article, not to read your opinion on titles.
- spacebacon 3y agoMaybe you should take the other guys advice and refrain from reading anything from anyone with the username spacebacon. Space Bacn is apparently something DARPA doesn’t take seriously at all either.
- calirepublik 3y agoMy firewall blocks your comment so I will comment on your name. Nothing should be taken seriously from a user named spacebacon.
- spacebacon 3y agoMy intelligence identifies you as petty.
- switch007 3y agoIs that a filter for all of Medium, even those hosted by non-Medium domains? If so, I'm interested in the details!
- cushychicken 3y agoNo idea about the brain, but it’s definitely harming my neck. I spend a lot of time looking at my phone. I’ve been getting neck cramps!
- renegade-otter 3y agoI see this spreading to all levels of life and society. People don't remember what happened a week ago, business "leaders" running companies into the ground because instant gratification is all there is - life beyond this quarter does not exist. We massively abuse legal "speed" to focus and downers to fall asleep, and all you have to do is get off the phone.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Podgajski 3y agoYou cannot separate the message from the medium. All of us are being exposed to the poorly studied effects of electromagnetic radiation and how that may effect cognition. I am not taking one side or the other, but the effects of 5G EMFs are not being investigated.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago5G as it mostly exists is using the same frequency spectrum your wifi uses. Your microwave also uses wifi 2.4GHz to heat water because the power is many orders of magnitude higher.
- financltravsty 3y agoElectromagnetic fields interact with ion channels (primarily calcium) in the nerves. Microwaves have also been studied for psychiatric disturbance, and links and probable physical causes shown. 5G is just one issue. We’re constantly bombarded with electromagnetic radiation from various sources at various frequencies. It also becomes difficult to get a real control group, without numerous confounding lifestyle factors, because we’re all being exposed to it, so the real long-term effects will most likely not be known. The only thing gleamed is that an increase in 2.4Ghz EMFs leads to further psychological disturbance.
- 11235813213455 3y agoLiving near a 5G antenna may be quite different than being next to a wifi router though, the power/amplitude are quite different
- renegade-otter 3y agoThat is not what "message vs the medium" means. This refers to how the medium affects how we think. Books promote deep, linear thinking. TV made us shallow and visual. Social media took it to the next level, turning us all into helpless Pavlovian mutts. You can have the same message on all of those mediums, but only one is really effective.
- 3y ago
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThe negative social and individual health impact of TV has been diagnosed for decades globally, so it is already understood to harm. Those that are not harmed suffer from survivor bias.
- _thisdot 3y agoI’m interested in learning how this is affecting sports. Couple of years ago, I remember reading an article that mentioned some EPL players underperforming because they stayed up to play Fortnite I’ve heard stories of cricketers in the 80s getting hammered drunk in the nights during test matches yet nursing their hangover and bowling 100s of deliveries the day after But technology is a seemingly harmless and way more accessible vice. It’s much easier to lose track of time on TikTok on your bed I’d say
- bouncycastle 3y agoIt is. We are offloading work away from our brains. After the arrival of smartphones and instant access to information, there's no need to remember anything when you can look it up instantly. Before, you'd memorize facts such as the longest river, highest mountain, etc, now you just query your phone. Before, you'd look at a map and memorize the street names where you have to turn, now you just open you maps on your phone. Before, you'd have to learn a foreign language. Now we have instant translation tools. Before, you'd have to learn the names of each plant and insect, now you have your smartphone lenses. Before, we would look up the manual for a library function call, now we have AI powered code generation tools... The point is that we are offloading many tasks away from our brains, and then filling them up with garbage, such as this comment.
- nine_k 3y agoHello Mr Socrates! It is with a great sadness I must tell you that writing has taken over the world, contrary to your warnings. But despair not, soon computers will take all intellectual work from humans, and the need to write for business reasons will finally cease. Those who care would be back to.memorizing facts as a sport. /s
- pier25 3y agoOtoh we're now processing much more information than ever. We're also communicating more than ever too.
- Darmody 3y agoProcessing or ingesting? We're being bombarded with information and we're not capable of digesting it all. Same with goes with communication. We're probably thousands of km away from each other and we can communicate but we can't bond, that why people are more lonely than ever.
- brigadier132 3y agoI don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is that there are a ton of apps that are equivalent to digital slot machines. 1. Tiktok, youtube and instagram with a constant feed of < 5 minute videos that are perfectly targeted at your interests 2. 24 hr news with constant tragedy and rage inducing narratives 3. Instant access to pornography 4. Instant access to high fat / sugar food Having more valuable knowledge instantly available isn't the problem. It's the distractions that get us to waste our lives away swiping at a screen are the problem.
- palemoonale 3y ago[flagged]
- anon23432343 3y agoI hate this kind of blog posts... Back in the days when people got easy access to books people were thinking that kids reading all day the newest novel would make them only want to live in a dream world... The avg. human these days is way way smarter then 50 or 100 years ago... People always fill there brains with junk... Even in ancient Rome they were drawing penises on walls... Maybe the questions in schools an co. suck for the modern times? Maybe its an problem of the write of the article not a general problem?
- financltravsty 3y agoI wouldn’t say they are smarter. They have more information in their heads and know more ideas, facts, figures, and so on. But the wetware is still the same it’s been since ancient civilization. We haven’t changed, only stuffed our heads with more information that hasn’t been given any time for processing. Very few have any real free time to allow their brains to wonder and to begin integrating what their senses have collected. Dare I say this makes us less wise.
- TheRoque 3y agoIf you purely use IQ as a metric, the. Yes we are smarter than 100 or 50 years ago. However this has stagnated/reversed in the last decade.
- financltravsty 3y agoIs IQ not but a subjective list of attributes to test for that are culturally dependent? If Native Americans had an IQ test it might encompass being able to navigate and understand geography, weather, and animal and plant behavior without being aided by tools. In that case, most of us would qualify as handicapable and be sorted out by primitive career matching into nothing more than offerings to nature and the cycle of life. I think by definition the more stable and ingrained globalized culture becomes… the more likely we will select and refine for the attributes it requires to succeed. And by this virtue, we’ve made a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- 3y ago
- arcza 3y agoNavigated back the moment I saw it was Medium. RIP
- dsabanin 3y agoWhat if it's not harm, but adaption? Why would our brains survive hundreds of millions of years through evolution by adapting to everything around them, only to then then get broken (or "harmed") by the devices that those same brains proactively have designed, created, and then actively _chose_ to use en masse and now can't live without them? Could it be that the decrease in attention and memory is a reasonable adaption? If there are way more things to pay attention to, because we're all now much more aware of everything that's going on around us, it kind of warrants having shorter attention span by default, with moments of intense focus in rare circumstances. Same for memory, part of the reason why we invented computers is to be able to store and retrieve information better than us, and we succeeded. Now our brains are delegating to those external systems and focusing on things that truly require our intelligence. I know this is controversial, but I think there's something to it. I think that what is happening right now is justifiable evolutionary pressure on human species.
- Amanzel 3y agoWhole comment section reminds me of Reddit’s science sub, where some grave research result abt weed is posted and everybody that smokes trying their best to do some mental gymnastics to lie to themselves lol
- doix 3y ago"Technology" is such a broad term. I think it's reasonable to say that social media _likely_ harms our brains. But there's so much more to technology than social media. Technology makes it so that anyone can create anything, and creating things is the epitome "making the brain work" in my opinion. If you want to create art, you no longer need to buy canvas/paint/pens/whatever, same with music and many other things that technology has lowered the barrier too. There are so many video games that make your brain work. Not most of the garbage on mobile, but "real" games (for a lack of a better word). Even if it's not explicitly a puzzle game, any sufficiently difficult game forces you to practice and be patient to beat it. When you finally master it, you get that great delayed dopamine hit. I'm pretty sure the reason I can sit for hours and bash my head against a difficult problem/bug is because I spent my youth failing at video games for hours. tl;dr yes, some aspects of technology are bad. The solution isn't to blame technology, but to discourage the harmful parts of it and encourage the positive aspects of it.