Inescapable Technology Is Beating Up Our Brains [Overload]

Is casting off your iPad during dinner conversation even rude anymore? Is it normal to get nervous with distraction-free minutes? I just glanced at my phone while typing this. The NY Times explores our tech-addled brains, and how it’s hurting.

I noticed it the moment I got my iPhone during college. During pauses in lectures, bathroom breaks, while holding a woman’s hair while she vomited-my phone always found its way into my hand, almost unconsciously. Even once I wasn’t getting a huge email-and believe me, I wasn’t-the concept of missing something, anything, produced small ebbs of tension. Matt Richtel of The recent York Times thinks I’m just section of a far larger problem-a population of recent techaholics who aren’t only alienating themselves from the realm, but hurting their brains inside the process. The solution? Put away the screens and give your mind a miles needed break.

Richtel points to a growing body of neurological research that shows the brain needs downtime with a purpose to process experiences and retain information. So after we try and fill that awkward silence on a first date with an under-the-table game of Doodle Jump, we aren’t just blowing our chance at a second date, but preventing the mind from generating new understanding. ” Most certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” says Loren Frank of University of California, San Francisco.

So why are we jamming screens in our eyes? Probably because, sadly, at this point we’re afraid not to. We are afraid of boredom. Time is to be killed, through games played in quick intervals, inboxes cleared, or perhaps sexts sexted, in the event you’re lucky. But tech serves to fill the brief vacuums in our daily lives-a service we predict is making things easier, but is turning us into depleted zombies. ” People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” explains Marc Berman, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

The way out of this swamp of LCDs, Richtel says, is maybe what you’d expect-put the damn thing down and go outside. a contemporary study at the University of Michigan shows that being out in nature primes our brains to profit far better than being in a city-though for sure this isn’t an option for everyone. Wanting getting out into the wilderness, ” Anything that helps us move is useful,” says John Ratey of Harvard Medical School. Ratey’s right, needless to say. However it won’t be easy for plenty of of us to stress about where we’ll charge phone before heading into the woods. It’s difficult to think about how we filled our idle time before we all had these dancing devices at our side, nonetheless it’s probably worth pondering. Without consulting Wikipedia. [ NY Times ]

Illustration by Sam Spratt. Check up on Sam’s portfolio and become partial to his Facebook Artist’s Page .

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This post is tagged: beating, brains, Inescapable, overload, Technology