Brendan D. Murphy
Global Freedom Movement
Evidence is mounting that our haphazard info-consuming ways on the web are adversely affecting our neurological and cognitive functioning - as well as wasting time by making us far less efficient - and far more distracted - than we think we are. The internet is a wonderful (read: essential) thing for humanity, but the way we use it seems to need some tweaking.
According to a study in the Journal of Digital Information, people who read documents online containing hypertext didn't retain as much information as people reading without hypertext. The temptation to click on hyperlinks caused breaks in focus and attention, interrupting the flow of the material, thus compromising memory retention.[i]
We pay for our broken attention span in mitigated comprehension and recall. Scattered attention on the internet does not conduce to contemplation and the formation of deeper meaning, or broader understanding through dot connecting, a.k.a. context building. The ultimate example, of course, is aimless scrolling through social media feeds, "witnessing" lots of information while learning virtually nothing from it.
Daniel J. Levitin, neuroscientist, warns us that "Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for stimulation," adding that this rapid switching from one task to another "tweaks the novelty-seeking, reward-seeking centres of the brain, causing a burst of endogenous opioids (no wonder it feels so good!), all to the detriment of our staying on task. It is the ultimate empty-caloried brain candy. Instead of reaping the big rewards that come from sustained, focused effort, we instead reap empty rewards from completing a thousand little sugar-coated tasks."[iii]
Read more
Global Freedom Movement
Web-Based Brain Damage"Even though we think we're getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient." ~Daniel J. Levitin, Neuroscientist
Evidence is mounting that our haphazard info-consuming ways on the web are adversely affecting our neurological and cognitive functioning - as well as wasting time by making us far less efficient - and far more distracted - than we think we are. The internet is a wonderful (read: essential) thing for humanity, but the way we use it seems to need some tweaking.
According to a study in the Journal of Digital Information, people who read documents online containing hypertext didn't retain as much information as people reading without hypertext. The temptation to click on hyperlinks caused breaks in focus and attention, interrupting the flow of the material, thus compromising memory retention.[i]
There is also the issue of "multi-tasking." MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller states that our brains are "not wired to multitask well...When people think they're multitasking, they're actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there's a cognitive cost in doing so."[ii]Long-term memory is essential for building models, maps, or schemas - a.k.a. context. When we are poor in context, our ability to make informed assessments of incoming information is crippled. New information may be rejected simply because no groundwork (context) has been laid within which to assimilate it. Learning is stifled.
We pay for our broken attention span in mitigated comprehension and recall. Scattered attention on the internet does not conduce to contemplation and the formation of deeper meaning, or broader understanding through dot connecting, a.k.a. context building. The ultimate example, of course, is aimless scrolling through social media feeds, "witnessing" lots of information while learning virtually nothing from it.
Daniel J. Levitin, neuroscientist, warns us that "Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for stimulation," adding that this rapid switching from one task to another "tweaks the novelty-seeking, reward-seeking centres of the brain, causing a burst of endogenous opioids (no wonder it feels so good!), all to the detriment of our staying on task. It is the ultimate empty-caloried brain candy. Instead of reaping the big rewards that come from sustained, focused effort, we instead reap empty rewards from completing a thousand little sugar-coated tasks."[iii]
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment