“That Digital Device will rot your brain!”
As I was growing up in the 70s & 80s, I remember how much time I spent watching TV and playing console games on my Intellivision system. In the beginning, I was watching a lot of TV and my mom would say, “Stop watching TV or it will rot your brain!” Then in the early 80s, after I started playing games on the TV, she changed her warning to “Stop playing those games! It will rot your brain! Go read a book!” No matter what the medium, it was the same general message. Was she right though? Was TV and playing games stunting my growth? Is it only now in my fifties that I realize my mom might be on to something? These were the questions that percolated in my mind as I read chapter 4 in John Hari’s book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again.
Out of Patience
In a world which moves at the speed of light, how is it we’re not more enlightened than we were ten years ago? After all, we have access to more information, and therefore we should be able to learn faster and learn more, right? Yet the speed at which we consume information does not equal the ability to comprehend what’s being read at a deeper level. According to Hari, “We are also losing our cognitive patience…[and] the stamina and the ability to deal with cognitively challenging texts.” (Hari, p. 82). This makes sense. When you think about digital reading, you are skimming the text and moving on once you feel you’ve read enough. In contrast, reading a book requires you to take time to understand at a more complex level. Sometimes I think these shorter attention spans spill over into society becoming more short-tempered. Between the 2020 pandemic and information overload it’s no wonder we’ve become less patient or less tolerant. According to Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist, as a result of the shift to digital reading, we do not take the 100-200 milliseconds needed for empathy and understanding Wolf further explained the lack of deep reading today is bad for society.
No more patience
I Get You
Hari also discusses empathy and how it’s important for our global society to better understand each other. Hari points out that “Empathy is one of the most complex forms of attention we have – and the most precious.” He goes on to say that if we want to make strides toward a better future, empathy is the path to do so. In her keynote speech at the Falling Walls Conference in 2019, Wolf also spoke about the idea of empathy. Wolf asserts that empathy is not just about feelings, but also a theory of mind which allows us to connect to the world around and is a basis for a democratic society.
Try and understand each other
Pivotal Point
As we reflect on where we are today, we’re at a cross-section between the written word and digital. From my perspective, if we become better at reading, we might develop a better understanding of others around us, which could help us connect better with each other. The current digital landscape, where we scan headlines and skim text, gives us fragments of information. These fragments can lead to misinformation or narrow points of view. In the article Reading in a Digital Age, essayist and literary critic Sven Birkerts argues there are two levels of literary works: narrative premise and resonance. He claims that if we skim, we’re essentially “missing the real point of the work.” Likewise, Maryanne Wolf states in her keynote that we are at a “Hinged Moment” between the written text and digital. Both Wolf and Birkerts state in their own language that it’s not a digital versus not digital, but instead learning how to incorporate deep thinking back into society.
Books & Digital can coexist
“…fiction is a far better virtual reality simulator than the machines currently marketed under that name.”
—Johann Hari, Stolen Focus (p 88)
References
Birkerts, S. (2015). Retrieved from https://theamericanscholar.org/reading-in-a-digital-age/
Hari, J. (2023b). Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading. In Stolen focus: Why you can’t pay attention–and how to think deeply again (pp. 79–90). New York, NY: Crown.
Wolf, M. (2021). Retrieved from https://falling-walls.com/discover/videos/how-the-digital-era-threatens-our-reading-abilities/