By Stephen Smoot
In the mid 1980s Donald Fagan temporarily cut himself adrift from the band he founded, Steely Dan. On his album “The Nightfly,” he recorded an upbeat and optimistic sounding tune called I. G. Y. The title referred to the cultural context of the International Geophysical Year, an intense period of scientific study of Earth science, collecting information and starting analysis. It sparked a lot of confidence about science taking humanity to new heights.
Fagan being Fagan, he included subtly subversive lyrics, such as “a just machine to make big decisions/Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision/ We’ll be clean when their work is done/We’ll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young.”
That “dream’s in sight”, but the impact of how humanity got here, what it does next, and how people are affected should raise major concerns.
Evidence increasingly shows that the most common ticket to the online world does the intellect of those who use it little good.
Three years ago, a group of scientists published a study in the International Journal of Environmental research and Public Health entitled “Impact of Mobile Phone Screens on Adolescents’ Cognitive Health.” The study states that “in recent years, there has been an increase in the usage of mobile phones by adolescents. It could even be stated that it is a central part of their lives.”
It also says “some evidence has been provided on how excessive exposure times can be detrimental, not only to cognitive health, but also their overall well-being.”
Any negative effects from use are completely pervasive in some age groups. Nature magazine reported that in 2021, 100 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 (statistically speaking) owned a cellphone of some type while 96 percent owned a smartphone.
Studies in the 70s and 80s on cognition and mental processing determined that humans have a finite capacity to sift through inputs of information. The more inputs of information in a given time, the more chance that the brain will overload. When this happens, “the cognitive system cannot process all the necessary information to some extent, which results in poorer cognitive abilities.
When most people sit down and read a book in a quiet space, their brains focus on processing the words on the page, turning them into thoughts that can be stored in the memory for later use. Only the reader’s own thoughts or environmental distractions can distract the brain from processing.
In childhood, these processes also help the brain to build itself. Neural and other channels develop strength, capacity, and resilience, enabling better processing, deeper and more critical thinking, and the ability to analyze what has been learned so it can be used in the future.
Just like a muscle, the harder it works under ideal conditions, the stronger it gets
In the past, before smartphones, children also followed the method in which their brain worked best. Visual learners turned to books and images. Audial learners are more comfortable acquiring knowledge from lecture, music, or other sounds. Tactile learners need to have their hands on a project to develop skills most effectively.
The Nature article showed how all types of learning suffer in the mere presence of smartphones. Noises made by the phone condition a person to respond mentally in the same way as hearing their name called. College students “who kept their cell phones with them during a lecture performed worse and had a worse recall of the contents of the lecture than participants who did not have their cell phones with them.”
Additionally the focus needed to learn from words cannot even begin to develop on a smartphone with virtually limitless potential distractions from mentally concentrating.
Even when the phone is turned off, its presence continues to distract users with the potential of what they could otherwise be doing.
The University of Texas Permian Basin published an article entitled “The Psychology of Smartphone Addiction.” It indicates that “the problem is dopamine.” This hormone serves as “the brain’s major reward and pleasure neurotransmitter.”
Dopamine is a catalyst for many types of addiction. The most popular, and destructive, illegal drugs cause injections of dopamine that users grow to both enjoy and then physically depend upon. Heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, nicotine, and alcohol all spark dopamine “hits” from the brain.
Smartphone use, especially social media interactions, work in the same fashion.
The University of Texas P. B. article goes on to state that “after an initial rush of dopamine, there’s a dip like a craving. What goes up must come down. If a person isn’t addicted, the craving passes, but if they continue binging, the brain compensates with lower and lower dips.”
Add to this the fact that many smartphone applications are designed to keep minds involved in activities that bring them some sort of profit. Others, especially those created in Communist China, actually seek to manipulate individuals and groups in Western society toward unhealthy and antagonistic attitudes about themselves, other people, and their countries.
There’s no need to go into the effects on the first generation to grow up with them since birth. The generation styled “Z’s” problems with academics and social interaction are well-documented.
So what is to be done?
Antero Garcia, an associate professor in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, wrote recently that digital technology tools “might be slowly poisoning us” and argues that “educational technology might, in fact, be making our schools worse.” He adds that “these tools reshape students’ bodies and their relation to the world around them” and “have become disembodied from their minds and hearts.”
He suggests that schools need to cut back on digital tools until determining which actually provide benefit while not harming the child or education in general, especially since digital tools cost money.
Although it’s tough to do so with the entire culture preaching their virtue, perhaps parents need to look at smartphones as if they were a dangerous drug with highly addictive qualities. Think about them in that contest before deciding on whether or not to allow a child to have one, the age in which they get them, and what limits to impose on use.
Children need phones for calling and texting, primarily to stay connected with parents and guardians. But parents need to think more about providing smartphones, given the powerful potential they have for shaping kids’ mental and physical health and how malevolent entities can use them to cause kids’ overt harm..
The future is here. Science and technology continue to expand at incredible rates. What is status quo now will be seen as obsolete by the day after tomorrow.
Science and technology, however, are not always beneficial. Nuclear power can light up – or blow up – a city. Smartphones can be a key to a world of knowledge or devices that dull the mind and senses, perhaps permanently.
Society needs to be more thoughtful and more careful with science and technology and not assume that advances are always automatically leading to something better.
