For Your Brain ‘s Sake – Step Away From Your Cell Phone, Email…
As someone who began her professional career in “the before” — the before cell phones (let alone Smartphones), before email, before answering machines and fax machines – heck, before the Internet and social networking “opportunities” beyond imagination (FB, Twitter, Pinterest…) – I could so relate to Daniel J Levitin’s January 18, 2105 article for The Guardian, “Why the Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain.” It’s not so much that any one of these modern technologies is inherently “bad,” rather it’s their contribution to multitasking, which science is now showing IS bad for our brains.
©2014 Lisa Frederiksen, BreakingTheCycles.com
I loved Levitin’s description of our cell phones and our attachment to them, for example:
“Our smartphones have become Swiss army knife–like appliances that include a dictionary, calculator, web browser, email, Game Boy, appointment calendar, voice recorder, guitar tuner, weather forecaster, GPS, texter, tweeter, Facebook, updater, and flashlight. They’re more powerful and do more things than the most advanced computer at IBM corporate headquarters 30 years ago. And we use them all the time, part of a 21st-century mania for cramming everything we do into every single spare moment of downtime. We text while we’re walking across the street, catch up on email while standing in a queue – and while having lunch with friends, we surreptitiously check to see what our other friends are doing. At the kitchen counter, cosy and secure in our domicile, we write our shopping lists on smartphones while we are listening to that wonderfully informative podcast on urban beekeeping.” excerpt from Daniel J Levitin’s January 18, 2105 article for The Guardian, “Why the Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain.”
And his portion on emails really struck a chord with me, as well,
“…Workers in government, the arts, and industry report that the sheer volume of email they receive is overwhelming, taking a huge bite out of their day. We feel obliged to answer our emails, but it seems impossible to do so and get anything else done.
“Before email, if you wanted to write to someone, you had to invest some effort in it. You’d sit down with pen and paper, or at a typewriter, and carefully compose a message. There wasn’t anything about the medium that lent itself to dashing off quick notes without giving them much thought, partly because of the ritual involved, and the time it took to write a note, find and address an envelope, add postage, and take the letter to a mailbox. Because the very act of writing a note or letter to someone took this many steps, and was spread out over time, we didn’t go to the trouble unless we had something important to say. Because of email’s immediacy, most of us give little thought to typing up any little thing that pops in our heads and hitting the send button. And email doesn’t cost anything.” excerpt from Daniel J Levitin’s January 18, 2105 article for The Guardian, “Why the Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain.”
But it’s the contribution of our modern world technologies — email, Smartphones, FB, Twitter… — to multitasking and the impact of that on our brains that is especially concerning.
For Your Brain ‘s Sake
I encourage you to read Levitin’s full article, “Why the Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain,” and then check out the following, as well.
After reading, you just might decide to step away from your cell phone – at least for brief periods of time throughout the day – and take a second (perhaps third, fourth or fifth…) look at how you use email, Twitter, FB and the like.
And good luck! I know I’ll need it – you should see how many screens I have open right now, and I read Levitin’s article two weeks ago!
Lisa Frederiksen
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Loved this. I haven’t had a smart phone in 4 years. Always being available to everyone’s beckon call or text was exhausting. Though I didn’t want to quit, I had no choice when I lost my phone. It wasn’t until a week or so after I lost my phone that I realized it felt like half of my stress had melted away. So many people use face to face time with their face to their phones instead of each other 🙁 We all need human interaction to thrive!