Reframing the Impact of Technology on Our Brains

I was talking with a friend recently about the impact of technology on our brains. This is an old and dear friend from my childhood, a writer and expat who lives in Italy, and someone I don’t get the chance to talk with as much as I’d like to. She said: “I’m so tired of people telling me I should be using a computer to do my writing. Doing that will change my brain and ruin my writing.” I was startled by the depth of her conviction, and by my rising concern about the negative framing of the impact of technology on our brains.

This is a woman who was using teletype machines and computer terminals in New York newsrooms before many of us had even seen a computer. She has no aversion to typing her manuscript into a computer after it is written; Rather it is a concern that using the technology tool itself will affect her creative mental process. (I will be forever thankful she views the choice between handwritten letters and email messages between friends in the same way. I doubt email messages would have survived my moves over the years as her letters have.) This could be seen as a simple personal preference, or idiosyncrasy, were it not for the spate of research, blog posts, and books predicting similarly dire effects.

A Negative Frame

You can think of frames as shortcuts to mental models, with an emotional component added in. There are two recurring themes in the current frame being used about the brain effects of technology, and in particular, Internet and cellphone technology. In their simplest form these two concepts can be described as:

Using technology negatively changes the physical wiring and processes within the human brain, and thus our behaviors and capabilities;
Using technology negatively changes the social interaction between humans, and thus our behaviors and capabilities.

Both themes play into a frame of technological determinism — a frame I, and anyone else who believes in positive change, find disturbing.

Rewiring How We Think

Now I’m not an advocate for playing ostrich about how digital devices and other technology changes affect how we think. Douglas Coupland‘s 2010 biography, Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of my Work!, has added weight and prescience to McLuhan‘s famous quote: “We shape our tools. And afterwards our tools shape us.” It’s the negative determinism that is a concern, as reflected in the increasingly prevalent writings in which McLuhan’s ‘shape’ or ‘influence’ is now framed as permanently rewire.

Nicholas Carr may have kick-started this popular idea when he wrote how the use of technology had changed the way he absorbs and processes information in his Atlantic Monthly article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” If you accept the brain research cited in these studies, you may end up feeling as if you must totally abandon many of today’s digital tools, or face an inevitable diminishment of your capabilities. The recent reports of cellphone use changing brain activity will only heighten concern, despite the clear statement by the National Institutes of Health that long-lasting effects have not been observed.

Paro, therapeutic baby seal robot

Changing How We Interact with Each Other

While using the Internet and digital devices is seen as altering how we think, there is also a significant upsurge in the view that using technology and social networks in particular, has intrinsically undesirable social consequences. Perhaps the epitome of this position is represented by Alone Together, the third book in MIT researcher Sherry Turkle‘s series exploring the impact of technology on our lives. After 15 years of research, Dr. Turkle concludes that as our use of technology ramps up, our emotional capabilities and connections ramp down. The most chilling section of the book is the description of the research project done using fur-covered baby seal robots pre-programmed to act as substitute companions for isolated individuals. Those involved became as attached to the computerized robot seals, as demonstrated by their brain wave patterns, as they were to living creatures. As neuroscientist Susan Greenfield said recently when speaking of the anesthetizing effects of technology, ” When someone I love dies, I still want to be able to cry.”

An Alternative Frame

Short of becoming Luddites, do we have an alternative frame to substitute for technological determinism? I believe we do. One example, The Social Brain, comes immediately to mind as a practical frame that is focused on using the emerging science to support our humanity and positive societal change. There are a few other voices out there supporting a frame of positive change that does not simultaneously call for either complete technology abstinence or neglect of the latest neuroscience and behavioral research. Perhaps there is promise in message framing based on Aristotle’s principle of “moderation in all things,” of attention to attaining in our daily lives interlaced periods of technology, social interaction and mindful stillness.

For as Dr. Iain McGilchrist puts it, “With a rising interest in neuroscience, we have an opportunity, which we must not squander, to sophisticate our understanding of ourselves.”