This is your brain...on the Internet
January 20th 2010 04:58
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Bob McMillan
Herald-Citizen Staff
Let's be clear: I'm not one of those geezers who won't use the Internet because I think government agents are tracking my every move or Web viruses may eat my brain. I'm one of those geezers who's been on the Internet in one way or the other since the mid-90s. I use it every day. I don't fear the thing.
It's given me friends in Cyprus, England, New Zealand and all over the U.S. It's put the knowledge of the ages a mouse click away. It's brought me laughs, tears and a nu wA of ritN. One recent study assured me that as the owner of an aging brain, regular Web use keeps my mind nearly as nimble as a 20-year-old's. No, that's good news, the study assured me.
But since I find lately that my brain misplaces odds and ends like passwords, my Social Security number and my middle name, I'm a little more guarded about my memory and other mental skills. Luckily the brain, even my road-worn one, is incredibly resilient. The thing's practically like Silly Putty. New habits make physical changes in its hardwiring. We can improve memory and other mental skills by changing how we habitually use our brains.
We can also dumb it down. Feed it a constant diet of blurbs and infobits, keep it hopping from Web link to link, never give it time to absorb or reflect on even a little of the incoming data drenching our brains every moment of the day and we're useless if the Internet's down. Our brain quivers anxiously. What are we missing? Has a friend updated their Facebook page and we didn't even know about it? It hurts to think about it.
I knew I was onto something when I stumbled across an article last week in the Brain in the News newsletter. Seriously. I read now and then. Words printed on paper. It keeps the eyes out of trouble. The upshot: We're creating a society with a short attention span, warned the director of the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic at Stanford University.
"The more we become used to just sound bites and tweets, the less patient we'll be with more complex, more meaningful information. And I do think we might lose the ability to analyze things with any depth and nuance," wrote Dr. Elias Aboujaoude.
In short, we're trotting a lot of information past our brain but we're not giving it time to use it. We're creating Teflon brains and not the mental muscles to make sense of the data. If nature works on the "use it or lose it" principle, where are we headed? Many see a dystopian "Clockwork Orange" society just down the road for us. Violence and mind control.
It's called classic conditioning. Expose your mind to something repeatedly and long enough and your brain's wiring changes. It's how you train a dog to sit. Sitting on cue becomes habit. It's also how the Internet trains us to think, by flitting from one juicy tidbit to the next. The national news and entertainment media's addiction to Pop Culture amplify the problem.
Instead of coming to our own informed decisions about, say, the economy and how we might keep putting food on the table, we worry more about Britney Spears' cellulite or let a blogger or talk show host spoon-feed us their take on what's important. Often they simply tickle our sense of outrage and give us nothing meaningful to chew on. If we still chewed.
Another recent study found that five times as many high school and college students today are overstressed or have mental health issues as students did in the Depression. Not only do they flit, they flit to superficial topics like looks, status and wealth. They get angry and frustrated when their expectations collide with the real world. They have trouble sitting alone for five minutes without stimulation.
The Teflon Brain's just an egghead notion, you say? OK, quick, answer me this: If a black box flight recorder is never damaged in a plane crash, why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff? Why did Kamikaze pilots wear seatbelts? If nothing sticks to Teflon, then how do they make Teflon stick to the pan?
Don't cheat using Wikipedia. Don't text a friend. Pocket your iPhone. Stop shooting things in your video game and think it out for yourself. Feel like your brain's jittering through sludge? Yeah, me too. This is why I'm consciously stepping back from the monitor more and I'm picking up books again. I'm reading them slowly. I'm thinking about them.
Sure, I still use the Internet. But I don't live there anymore. I string together the blips and blurbs to decide what books to read. Then I dive into a full course meal. I take a walk and let it digest. It's helping me remember where I put my car keys. Next, I'm going to figure out why I put them in the ice tray. Day by day, another victory.
Bob McMillan is a columnist, section editor and lead paginator at the Herald-Citizen.
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