The impact of digital technology on our minds and behaviors is still relatively unexplored, meaning you are the only one who can make that assessment.
I just survived the production and release of another PBS documentary about media and technology called Digital Nation. What did I learn after two focused years of research into the impact of digital technology on our brains, emotions, behaviors and culture, or most relevant to our community, how living in a digitally connected culture changes the way people relate to one another in the real world and real life?
The real answer is that nobody really knows for sure what this stuff is doing to us.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be so surprising. How could anyone really measure such a thing? We still haven’t measured the impact on people’s brains and behaviors of watching TV—and nobody’s really planning to do so, beyond, however, one program or another that might help somebody sell something to you.
Even if we had the money and the funding, the effort itself is probably futile, anyway. Sure, we can put people in MRIs and look at brain activity while they’re playing with computers or reading books. Or maybe we can look at the way the brains of different generations have grown or shrunk in different areas.
But none of these changes is truly occurring in isolation from other causes and effects. TV was part of a huge shift in our culture and behavior—but was this due to the fact that people were sitting and looking at a tube instead of listening to the radio (or before, for that matter, the piano)? Or was it more the result of the new style of advertising to which they were being exposed: those interruptive, 30-second commercials?
Or, in an even bigger context, was the shift due to the new impact of national brands and the psychological research that went into that development before unleashing them—through TV—onto the general public? What if TV had started with a “pay” model like that of HBO instead of a commercially sponsored model such as CBS? Or even a publicly funded one like the BBC?
Likewise, it’s hard to parse the effects of video games from those of chatting online from those of banner ads from those of simply sitting with an illuminated screen 14 inches from your face. We can find out some things, such as the fact that keeping an e-mail window open behind your document as you work makes you half as efficient as working with the program closed, or that someone taller than you in a virtual simulation enjoys a huge negotiating advantage over you back in the real world.
But, until the real research comes in decades from now—if it ever does—the only way we have of gauging the total impact of living in the digital realm is to do so on a personal level. How does using a particular technology make me feel? Does it make me feel more or less connected to the person I’m engaging with? Am I more likely to get mad when conversing over e-mail? Is it taking me less time or actually more?
On top of that, we have to cope with the fact that the way we feel might not be the way we actually are—like a drunk person, sometimes we over-estimate our abilities under the influence. As one of the scientists we spoke with for Digital Nation has learned, people think they are successfully multitasking, when in fact they are making many mistakes they wouldn’t make were they single tasking. Likewise, we might assume, people sometimes feel closer to others online, even though some of these relationships have less true intensity and less true substance.
And again, all of these perceptions are colored and clouded by who and what we are relating to through all these devices. The computer looks and feels differently to a grandmother using it to connect with her grandchildren than to a worker who uses it to fend off commands from an irate boss or client complaints. The computer is just the messenger.
Yes, our digital technologies have biases all their own: The cell phone makes us more vulnerable to prods from others, the Internet makes us part of more different affiliations of people, video games increase dopamine levels. But now that these technologies have established themselves in our lives, the biases of our technologies may be secondary to the ways in which we choose to use them.
The trick, at least for me, is to unplug from the digital for long enough to regain my bearings. Re-establish myself as an organic life form, primarily, and a virtual presence only secondarily. And during those interludes, remember what it is I want in the first place—for myself, my loved ones, my colleagues and my society.
Meeting up with other people in the real world is the ultimate reset button. One+
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is the author, most recently, of Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back. He teaches media studies at The New School in New York. Contact him at rushkoff@rushkoff.com.
