TTC Video - How Digital Technology Shapes Us

As Professor Indre Viskontas of the University of San Francisco points out in the 24 eye-opening lectures of How Digital Technology Shapes Us, we are not the first generation to worry that new technology will harm our children. Since the beginning of recorded history, we have been underestimating the capacity of the human brain to adapt to and take advantage of emerging technologies. The printing press, the novel, the telephone, even writing—when each of these was first introduced, they were derided as if they would ruin civilization itself. And yet, more often than not, how these inventions changed society was far from predictable.

Are our worries about the rise of screen time well-founded? Or is it possible that we are simply acting out of a desire to keep things as they were, without fully imagining all the potential positives of new technologies? Already, our children have instantaneous access to information we would have spent hours or even days collecting just a few decades ago. And certainly, few adults would want to go back to the days before the internet, search engines, and streaming services made our lives so much easier; more enjoyable; and, in some ways, safer.

In How Digital Technology Shapes Us, Professor Viskontas shares some of the most exciting research into this relatively new topic, providing a scientific approach to judging the true pros and cons of our interaction with technology in the digital age.

Can Technology Change Your Brain?

If you spend hours and hours every day playing video games, will that screen time change your brain? The answer is, indeed, yes. But it’s not the screen time specifically that causes that change. If you spent all your time playing the piano, lifting weights, or working on a novel, over time, your brain would change too—because the brain is an organ that alters itself in response to our lived experience. As Professor Viskontas explains, our experience leaves an indelible trace on our neuroanatomy by affecting:

The firing rates of brain cells—how quickly and in what kind of pattern they send out their electrical messages;
Which chemicals the cell releases when activated, and which chemicals it readily receives;
How many connections a neuron is capable of making, that is, how bushy or sparse its projections are;
The synchronicity of activity across millions of cells, known as brain waves; and
Which brain regions respond to specific experiences or thoughts, and how efficient those responses are.

Our brain requires stimulation in order to function, and that’s why change is inevitable. Neurons in the brain must be stimulated to communicate with each other; cells that are not stimulated—socially isolated ones—die more quickly, especially during development. Since learning a new skill forges new connections in the brain and incorporates these cells into the already active mind, the question is not whether digital technology is good or bad, but rather how our brains are changed by it.

No Easy Answers

In How Digital Technology Shapes Us, you will learn that studies addressing the effects of digital technology reveal few easy answers. Just like almost everything else in life, there are many factors involved. For example, parents confronting the issue of screentime for children often wonder if it is best to remove screens altogether. And while adults must often spend time in front of computer and phone screens for work, many wonder if this extended interaction with technology can be detrimental to our brains and our health.

In most cases, it is less about the time spent in front of the screen and more about what you are doing. For example, if you and your 8 year old sit down together to explore a word-association game on your tablet or read a story on your e-reader, those activities are positive experiences for your child. Constructive parental/child interaction is one of the most important factors in your child’s ability to build a strong, healthy brain. On the other hand, if you spend your time watching videos instead of interacting with other people in the real, three-dimensional world, or if a teen is alone in his room on the computer all day without supervision and possibly finding questionable content, those can be detrimental experiences for the growing brain. And since our brains are constantly developing and changing based on our experience of the world, concerns about the effects of technology are not limited only to children and adolescents.

But while the pros and cons of screen use often depend on the specific circumstances, studies do reveal that:

Digital technology has likely negatively affected the quality of our sleep, particularly for young people;
The use of social media often results in increased feelings of sadness, jealousy, and envy;
There are sometimes troubling differences between relationships that begin through online dating services versus those that begin more traditionally;
Online pornography can become addictive and has an outsized ability to shape the brain, even leading to sexual problems, like erectile dysfunction; and
Our online choices—from shopping to art to politics—are being manipulated by algorithms more than we realize. And these algorithms often have goals that might not be aligned with our own.

But I’m Getting Better at Multitasking

Many of us believe we are adjusting well to this new digital technology with its constant demands on our time and attention. We’re learning to cope with bosses who want the ability to communicate 24 hours a day, friends who communicate solely through social media, emails that come in by the dozens every hour, and children who are on to the next application before their parents have learned to navigate the previous one. And let’s not forget how often many of us sacrifice sleep to find the peace and focus we need to work on projects long after everyone else has gone to bed and the digital onslaught slows down.

Sure, we all feel a bit overwhelmed from time to time, but most of us have become pretty good at multitasking—and that really saves us, doesn’t it?

Not really. As Professor Viskontas explains, multitasking cannot save us because our brain is not capable of true multitasking. It’s just not built that way. What we experience as multitasking is actually our brain flitting back and forth from this task to the next to the next to the next. That we can do, but in the process, we could be losing:

The ability—and opportunity—to perform deep work, to push our brain power to the limit and to think deeply about a topic or task without distraction;
The opportunity for deep reading, to completely immerse ourselves in a work task without distraction, leading to greater powers of imagination; and
The empathy that builds up when we think deeply about people who are different from us, to truly expand the tribe rather than reinforce tribalism.

The good news is that in this course, Professor Viskontas offers not only insight into the ways we can balance technology and other dimensions of our lives, but also how to understand how our brains can be “rewired” by good habits. With a better knowledge of the effects of technology, we can make better decisions for ourselves and those in our care, including the healthier ways we can connect with one another, both with and without technological tools like social media.

As you will discover, digital technology definitely shapes and changes us. And nothing about our interaction with these technologies is as straightforward or predictable as we might think. But once we learn how it affects us, we can make better decisions concerning our use of these technologies and we can help ourselves and our children adapt to a changing world that isn’t slowing down anytime soon.