How Does Digitalization Affect The Brain?

The human brain can be considered the most efficient brain in the animal kingdom. There are nearly 100 billion neurons connected to each other that communicate faster than light. As the digital environment invades our lives and daily lives, many wonder the question of how digitalization affects the brain, and could our brain lose some of its properties with it?

Let’s start with the assumption that the brain is plastic and adaptive, so we can naturally expect some adjustments and changes to take place to optimize our brain resources. Based on this, we can assume that because of digitalization, we no longer need certain processes in the brain, in which case our brain may compensate for this deficiency by improving other skills.

For this reason, we can already find today a few scientific results that point to the changes that our brains, especially children’s brains, are facing in the age of digitalization.

Digitization…

There has been a huge change in technology in our society, and even in a relatively short time. In just about 50 years, we’ve gone from the fact that many households didn’t even have a television, to a society where we refrigerated space from the store for foods that have run out.

Logically, these phenomena change the way we behave, the way we perform different tasks, the way we communicate, and the way we use information to our advantage in our daily lives. And that’s why digitalization also changes the way our brains function and even their anatomy.

… And cognitive skills

According to Gary Small, a neuroscientist at the University of Los Angeles, the use of technology is changing the brain. This argument is based on the observation of how some neural networks are strengthened where other older networks are weakened. This process is a natural part of the human brain, but what the subject of in-depth studies wants to refer to is that these changes occur in certain structures or circles in the brain. For example, in circles related to attention.

We spend a lot of time with mobile phones, tablets or computers – we often even use all the devices at the same time. This results in us performing multiple tasks simultaneously. Multitasking, i.e., performing several different things at the same time, is a cognitive ability that is found in all of us and allows us to maintain attention in several different activities, but which is estimated to support two simultaneous tasks.

Therefore, when our brains focus on two tasks, the frontal lobe of the brain divides its resources in order to perform both tasks correctly. On the contrary, when we strive to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, our brains begin to have difficulty filtering and storing information, paying attention to things outside of tasks, and moreover, it is more challenging for them to move from one task to another.

Similarly, in these situations, we have less of the brain capacity needed to store information, because in the age of digitalization, we can search for any information again whenever we need it. At the same time, however, it is believed that digitalization can potentially improve our decision-making capacity as our senses become more accurate and the digital environment glorifies speed and efficiency. For this reason, how digitalisation affects the brain can also be reflected in the acceleration of data processing, which in turn makes us more efficient in this sense.

… And the developing brain

Children’s brains are a particularly interesting aspect in terms of the impact of the digital age, as they are already growing in a technological environment. In fact, children born around the year 2000 are considered the generation of the digital age.

This means that when children enter a world where they are surrounded by technology, their brains spontaneously and naturally develop a different way of thinking to understand and comprehend the world.

These children grow up developing different and digitized skills, not only because of their environment, but also because adults lead them to do so; such as in cases where children are given a telephone or tablet for entertainment. In this way, while it may initially seem harmless, it can have significant effects on a child’s development.

First, through this way, parents can promote a more passive lifestyle in their children, which in turn also affects the brain, as excessive use of electronic devices weakens nerve fibers and thus leads to poorer cognitive performance. Similarly, excessive use of electronic devices has been found to have a significant effect on language development as well as increase cortisol levels, which has a detrimental effect on the brain.

Will our brains become useless?

As we said earlier, our brains are able to adapt and part of the adaptation is giving up those neurons that are no longer needed or used. Therefore, if, over the years and during digitalization, some of the functions of our brain networks are no longer needed, they will eventually deteriorate. This is called the “paradox of progress”.

However, this change is not always just negative, as our brains will have the capacity and resources to invest in other aspects. For example, we no longer need to store certain information in our brains, but instead we need to remember where we can retrieve that information. Or, for example, we no longer need to focus on the totality of the two ideas, as we now have more resources in our hands to combine the concepts between the two ideas.

In summary, however, we can say that digitalization is really affecting the brain and changing the way we perceive and treat the world. However, this change does not mean that it is always a change for the worse. We are still human beings, and our brains are likely to continue to be the best computer we can find in the world. In addition, it is worth bearing in mind that the unique and abundant social side of our brains is an ability that is impossible to replace.