from Hacker News

Is technology harming our brains?

by wmlive on 12/3/23, 1:25 PM with 61 comments

• by strict9 on 12/3/23, 2:19 PM

  Not that my brain has completely gone downhill — I’m still smart and feel motivated, but I have noticed my concentration and memory are not what they used to be.

  It’s because technology is harming our brains.

  I sympathize with the author and feel this to an extent, but maybe this has more to do with aging than it does using apps and addictive social media. Memorization is a lot easier when you're young versus when you're older.

  Though I'm sure it does play a part--spending most of your time on social media leads to not using some parts of your brain. You've got to use it to keep it working properly, just like muscle.

• by nonethewiser on 12/3/23, 2:23 PM

  > I’ve been thinking about this time recently because my focus, learning, and memory were all amazing, but I don’t feel that way anymore. Not that my brain has completely gone downhill — I’m still smart and feel motivated, but I have noticed my concentration and memory are not what they used to be.

  What if we apply this to a more macro scope? Human evolution. It would be bad if we stopped relying on our brains (hey, we have great AI!), brainpower stopped developing over time, brainpower languishes, humans lose intelligence.

• by turtleyacht on 12/3/23, 1:55 PM

  No, not technology--the choice of software.

• by _thisdot on 12/3/23, 3:28 PM

  I’m interested in learning how this is affecting sports. Couple of years ago, I remember reading an article that mentioned some EPL players underperforming because they stayed up to play Fortnite

  I’ve heard stories of cricketers in the 80s getting hammered drunk in the nights during test matches yet nursing their hangover and bowling 100s of deliveries the day after

  But technology is a seemingly harmless and way more accessible vice. It’s much easier to lose track of time on TikTok on your bed I’d say

• by dsabanin on 12/3/23, 6:56 PM

  What if it's not harm, but adaption? Why would our brains survive hundreds of millions of years through evolution by adapting to everything around them, only to then then get broken (or "harmed") by the devices that those same brains proactively have designed, created, and then actively _chose_ to use en masse and now can't live without them?

  Could it be that the decrease in attention and memory is a reasonable adaption? If there are way more things to pay attention to, because we're all now much more aware of everything that's going on around us, it kind of warrants having shorter attention span by default, with moments of intense focus in rare circumstances.

  Same for memory, part of the reason why we invented computers is to be able to store and retrieve information better than us, and we succeeded. Now our brains are delegating to those external systems and focusing on things that truly require our intelligence.

  I know this is controversial, but I think there's something to it. I think that what is happening right now is justifiable evolutionary pressure on human species.

• by anon23432343 on 12/3/23, 3:43 PM

  I hate this kind of blog posts...

  Back in the days when people got easy access to books people were thinking that kids reading all day the newest novel would make them only want to live in a dream world...

  The avg. human these days is way way smarter then 50 or 100 years ago...

  People always fill there brains with junk... Even in ancient Rome they were drawing penises on walls...

  Maybe the questions in schools an co. suck for the modern times? Maybe its an problem of the write of the article not a general problem?

• by wmlive on 12/3/23, 1:25 PM

  »Technology and our reliance on it is limiting our critical thinking capabilities and ultimately harming our brains — but can we stop it?«

• by cushychicken on 12/3/23, 3:27 PM

  No idea about the brain, but it’s definitely harming my neck.

  I spend a lot of time looking at my phone. I’ve been getting neck cramps!

• by Podgajski on 12/3/23, 3:20 PM

  You cannot separate the message from the medium.

  All of us are being exposed to the poorly studied effects of electromagnetic radiation and how that may effect cognition.

  I am not taking one side or the other, but the effects of 5G EMFs are not being investigated.

• by mensetmanusman on 12/3/23, 3:26 PM

  The negative social and individual health impact of TV has been diagnosed for decades globally, so it is already understood to harm.

  Those that are not harmed suffer from survivor bias.

• by doix on 12/4/23, 8:49 AM

  "Technology" is such a broad term. I think it's reasonable to say that social media _likely_ harms our brains. But there's so much more to technology than social media.

  Technology makes it so that anyone can create anything, and creating things is the epitome "making the brain work" in my opinion. If you want to create art, you no longer need to buy canvas/paint/pens/whatever, same with music and many other things that technology has lowered the barrier too.

  There are so many video games that make your brain work. Not most of the garbage on mobile, but "real" games (for a lack of a better word). Even if it's not explicitly a puzzle game, any sufficiently difficult game forces you to practice and be patient to beat it. When you finally master it, you get that great delayed dopamine hit.

  I'm pretty sure the reason I can sit for hours and bash my head against a difficult problem/bug is because I spent my youth failing at video games for hours.

  tl;dr yes, some aspects of technology are bad. The solution isn't to blame technology, but to discourage the harmful parts of it and encourage the positive aspects of it.

• by arcza on 12/3/23, 4:08 PM

  Navigated back the moment I saw it was Medium. RIP

• by Amanzel on 12/4/23, 8:30 AM

  Whole comment section reminds me of Reddit’s science sub, where some grave research result abt weed is posted and everybody that smokes trying their best to do some mental gymnastics to lie to themselves lol

• by bouncycastle on 12/3/23, 3:29 PM

  It is.

  We are offloading work away from our brains.

  After the arrival of smartphones and instant access to information, there's no need to remember anything when you can look it up instantly.

  Before, you'd memorize facts such as the longest river, highest mountain, etc, now you just query your phone.

  Before, you'd look at a map and memorize the street names where you have to turn, now you just open you maps on your phone.

  Before, you'd have to learn a foreign language. Now we have instant translation tools.

  Before, you'd have to learn the names of each plant and insect, now you have your smartphone lenses.

  Before, we would look up the manual for a library function call, now we have AI powered code generation tools...

  The point is that we are offloading many tasks away from our brains, and then filling them up with garbage, such as this comment.

• by renegade-otter on 12/3/23, 3:17 PM

  I see this spreading to all levels of life and society. People don't remember what happened a week ago, business "leaders" running companies into the ground because instant gratification is all there is - life beyond this quarter does not exist.

  We massively abuse legal "speed" to focus and downers to fall asleep, and all you have to do is get off the phone.