Preliminary results from a National Institutes of Health study indicate what some of us critics of modern technology long have warned: These blasted hand-held devices are making us dumber.
To quote Bloomberg’s account: “Smartphones, tablets, and video games are physically changing the brains of adolescents, early results from an ongoing $300 million study funded by the National Institute of Health have shown, according to a report by ‘60 Minutes.’ … The first bits of data suggest that the onslaught of tech screens has been transformative for young people — and maybe not for the better.”
More specifically: “premature thinning of the brain cortex.” And: “children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests.”
Combine that with another headline out today — “Your apps know where you were last night, and they’re not keeping it a secret” — and we start to see multiple dangers from overuse of “smart” technology. If these things are making us both dumber and less free, then that’s rather worrisome.
Both intuition and basic logic long ago should have taught us what the NIH study did. When a machine “thinks” for us, we don’t think for ourselves. And if some voice on our phones or in the dashboard of our cars tells us to “turn left in 200 feet,” our brains don’t do the contextual work of applying the broader picture of, say, a paper map, to the streets we see in front of us. We lose not just context but perspective, and our brains get lazy from lack of effort.
Those who have paid attention already know that brain synapses don’t “learn” to connect as well when students no longer learn cursive writing. The very effort, tiny though it is, of physically attaching one letter to the next helps a brain also learn how to make connections within itself.
The NIH study, as it reaches fuller results, likely will continue to find the same thing. When machines make our experience of the world “virtual,” our experiences are less real. When we don’t interact face to face, or at least via the human voice, we lose richness from our relationships, and so on.
Noting these disturbing realities does not make one a Luddite. Only a fool would think we can somehow turn back the clock. (Caveat: Unless, that is, an electromagnetic pulse knocks out not just 21st century technology but most of our electric grid as well — in which case we’ll be forced to learn the old ways just to survive.)
Yet what we can and should do is try to use our technology less as a matter of course, and more just as a fail-safe or backup. Buy real paper maps and plot our trips the old-fashioned way ahead of time — but use the on-board device if we get lost. Call somebody rather than texting them. Have kids meet in playgrounds, not online. Set aside periods every day, and especially on weekends, when teens have no access to cellphones. Encourage playfulness and imagination, rather than demanding immediate “answers” from the Internet.
A university professor once wrote an essay I commissioned from her for the Georgetown Hoya newspaper, about what was the most important part of the educational mission. Her answer was that we still need to inculcate appreciation for “wonder, wisdom, and serendipitous knowledge.”
She’s right. Alas, to the extent that we allow machines to move us in the other direction, rather than them merely being occasional tools in a pinch, we lose not only some of our ability to think, but some of our humanity as well.
