Tech Support Foundations

Cognitive Risks

Using digital technology can negatively impact you cognitively. Being aware of the risks is the first step to mitigating them.

Introduction

I am not a brain scientist. My points here will not be backed up by peer-researched scientific articles (though many exist which make the same points).

But I can tell you that you don’t just act on digital technology. It also acts on you. The methods of interaction that the technology allows (and doesn’t allow), and the content you see there all influence how you think and act.

Not all of these influences are positive, but the negative influences can be mitigated or avoided altogether when you think carefully about how the technology is influencing you and how you will actively choose to respond.

Each point below includes my recommendation for how to think about the risk in order to mitigate it.

Always-on digital technology drowns out thought

We snack on thought more, and don’t eat full meals. We don’t appreciate silence. We learn to hate silence as that time when real thoughts about life, death, and time emerge. We forget things faster. We have to check the weather or next GPS instruction 3 extra times.

Michael Grabowski is a neuroscience specialist and professor of communication at Manhattan College in New York. He says, “Our minds need time to absorb and synthesize that information, to critically examine it.That’s something that we do in silence, by actively disengaging from digital technology and focusing on the physical world around us.”

Tony Reinke’s brilliant book 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You dives deep into this risk (and many other cognitive risks of digital tech use). I highly recommend it.

Mitigate this risk by making intentional time for silence or digital detox. My current style is one day a week (Sunday for me), and one week a year (usually on vacation). Don’t grab your earbuds when you go for a walk. Tune into nature’s soundtrack. Listen. Let the thoughts come.

Short content, short attention spans

Athletes can do exercises that optimize their physical muscles for quick bursts of action or for prolonged, enduring effort. Any athlete can tell you that it’s not possible to optimize for both. A champion sprinter will not be able to compete with a champion marathon runner, though they both excel with their legs, heart, and lungs.

Your brain is a metaphorical muscle. And like physical muscles, your brain can be trained for quick bursts of action or for prolonged, enduring effort, but not both simultaneously.

Many digital technologies today pose the risk of training your brain for quick bursts of action. YouTube users jump from video to video. News readers skim headlines rather than read stories. Twitter users ingest full posts in under 10 seconds.

The average English word is 4.7 characters long.
The average tweet is 140 characters (or much shorter by some estimates).
Therefore, the approximate average tweet is 30 words long.

Estimated silent reading speed for non-fiction is 4 words per second.
Therefore, it takes a Twitter user approximately 7.5 seconds to read a tweet.

The simple act of using a technology that allows you to consume short content is training your brain to effectively process massive volumes of small info nuggets quickly. If you’re an auction house auctioneer or an air traffic controller, this might be a valuable skill.

For the rest of us, this brain-training comes at the cost of atrophy of our skill in focusing deeply on a single thought, like what is required to internalize a chapter in a textbook, or to follow the logic of a multi-part argument in a book.

If you’ve ever gotten brain-itchy and distracted while trying to focus on an extended thought (like writing an email or reading a book), then you know the problem here.

The solution is to be aware this is happening, and balance your brain’s exercise routine with more deep thinking, if not a majority of it.

Infinite scroll addiction

Google “infinite scroll and the brain.” Just try it.

Scrolling leads to discovery of new ideas and content, which leads to small bursts of dopamine in the brain, which leads to addiction.

You scroll. You keep scrolling. When you aren’t in the app scrolling, you wish you were. You feel like something cool might be one more swipe down. You suffer a repetitive strain injury in your hand or wrist.

Turning pages or clicking from “page 1” to “page 2” on a site gives you a sense of how much content you’ve taken in, how long you’ve been at it. Infinite scroll removes this sense entirely, meaning you don’t know how long you’ve been there. This benefits the digital technology makers who make money off your attention span.

Mitigate this risk by being aware of how scrolling affects your brain. Set yourself a limit like time or number of scrolls. Turn on pagination if it’s an option, where you reach the bottom of the page and have to click from “page 1” to page 2” rather than scroll infinitely down. The hard one: fight addiction by denying yourself when you want to do some scrolling. Don’t open the app. Go do something else. You’re strong. You can do it.

Notification addition

Google “notifications and the brain.” Just try it.

Notifications lead to discover of new ideas and content, which leads to small bursts of dopamine in the brain, which leads to addiction.

You check your phone. You check it again. When your phone lights up, you reach for it right away. You try to check the time but end up forgetting the time because you were looking for notifications. You scroll pointlessly on your lock screen looking for a notification to show up.

Please mitigate this risk. It’s embarrassing to watch. Disable notifications which don’t require your immediate response (which is probably just the actual phone app and some messaging apps). My phone would light up on its own about 2 or 3 times a day, total. But I actually have my phone in permanent Do Not Disturb/sleep mode, so that it never lights up on its own. I check my phone at certain times when I decide it makes sense to, not when the phone tells me to.