Digital distraction

Vox has a good article in which a large number of psychologist types from the US talk about their views of what digital technologies are doing to our brains.  As the preamble says:

With so many of us now constantly tethered to digital technology via our smartphones, computers, tablets, and even watches, there is a huge experiment underway that we didn’t exactly sign up for.

Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, even Vox (if we’re being completely honest) are competing for our attention, and they’re doing so savvily, knowing the psychological buttons to push to keep us coming back for more. It’s now common for American kids to get a smartphone by age 10. That’s a distraction device they carry in their pockets all the time. 

The more adapted to the attention economy we become, the more we fear it could be hurting us. In Silicon Valley, we’re told more parents are limiting their kids’ screen time and even writing no-screen clauses into their contracts with nannies. Which makes us wonder: Do they know something we don’t? 

If it’s true that constant digital distractions are changing our cognitive functions for the worse — leaving many of us more scatterbrained, more prone to lapses in memory, and more anxious — it means we’re living through a profound transformation of human cognition. Or could it be that we’re overreacting, like people in the past who panicked about new technologies such as the printing press or the radio? 

To find out, we decided to ask experts: How is our constant use of digital technologies affecting our brain health?

I certainly worry about the shortening of attention spans - my own included.   At least I can make it through a 2 hour movie still without needing to look at my phone - it drives me nuts if I see my son in particular pick up his phone in the middle of a Netflix show I thought he was fully engaged in.  We do at least still tell each other off if the family is at the dinner table (at home) together and one picks up their phone - unless it is to find the answer to a specific question being asked.  

On the other hand, it's impossible not to feel that the online life leads to information that you wouldn't otherwise have received.   It is quite the two edged sword, given that I blame it for the woeful misinformation and fraud that has kept climate change denialism and other anti-evidence attitudes alive.