WORLD OF LEARNING: SCREEN INVASION

"Digital Overload: Your Brain on Gadgets" NPR/Fresh Air 8/24/10

I've been linking to the New York Times series of articles titled "Your Brain on Computers" both here and on my website, but even if you have read all the stories, this interview by Terry Gross with their author, Matt Richtel, is worth listening to or reading.

Together, Richtel and Gross not only synthesize the information in the Times, but put a fresh spin on it.

Most exciting to me, though, in this conversation about "the screen invasion" and its effects on our brains, was what Richtel could not talk about. When Gross asked if her brain is different than children's brains today, given their increased exposure to screen technology in their formative years, Richtel demurred with his own question. "Can you stay tuned until early December?" That is, apparently, when the Times will begin delving into the issue of child brain development and new technology.

Tantalizingly, Richtel said that the "frontal lobe question" is "really the center of this conversation."

Something we know now that we didn't in the past is that the brain is plastic, even into old age. However, there is no doubt that it is most plastic in childhood. An essential difference between humans and the rest of nature is that a large portion of our brains are formed after birth. The frontal lobe, Richtel told Gross and her listeners, "evolves last. It sets priorities. It helps us balance between and make choices. It essentially says, here's where I'm going to direct my attention at any given time. And it's kind of long-term thinking, long-term goal-setting."

Richtel continued: "But it is constantly...under bombardment from other parts of the brain. The sensory parts that...send a message to the frontal lobe that says, should I pay attention and how much? When we have an onslaught of data coming in, the sensory cortices of the brain are now constantly bombarding the frontal lobe, saying, what should I pay attention to?"

That onslaught of data, according to Richtel is "three times the amount of information we consumed in 1960."

"And on some level, all this modern technology, what it winds up doing is kind of playing to a very primitive clash between the sensory cortices and the frontal lobe....almost like we get little tiny lions, little tiny threats or...little tiny rabbits that you want to chase and eat, you get little tiny bursts of adrenaline that are bombarding your frontal lobe asking you to make...very hard choices a lot."

That can affect sleep, attention, memory. Scientists are working to find out how much. If we use Richtel's analogy to food--it is good for you, but not if you eat junk, or go overboard--where is the line between nutritional and detrimental? In the interview, Richtel said there's "growing evidence that that line is closer than we've imagined...."

Richtel is no Luddite screaming about the end of the world. "I can now look things up on the computer with great ease that I couldn't do before," he told Gross. "I can make calculations that I wasn't able to do before. I can save information and organize it in ways I couldn't do before."

The danger, he implied, is trying to do that all the time. In the past, "a screen meant...something in your living room...now it's something in your pocket."

We, and kids, probably especially kids, are drawn to those "tiny burst of adrenaline" we get from screen time. Like the threat of a large animal or the promise of captured prey that our ancestors experienced, they thrill and excite us, so that "when you get a buzz in your pocket, when you hear a ring you get...a dopamine squirt." Dopamine, of course, is a chemical that regulates emotion, and "is also thought to be involved with addiction."

Because of that dangerous attraction, I believe we've got to make sure that we, and children, have down time--time away from the screen invasion.