A Generation of Lost Minds: Is Tech Addiction diminishing Human Intelligence?

“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. [Steve] Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” (NYTimes article, Sept. 10, 2014)” ― Nick Bilton

Technology has given us a lot in the past 2 decades, but there is also a lot it has taken away. There was a time when we had a very simple telephone in our house. It couldn’t move beyond a radius, had just one ring tone (which actually sounded like the word ring itself), and you had a rotating dial (even pushing buttons came later). It was a major source of community bonhomie as well, since neighbours who did not have phones used to come visit us to make calls every now and then.

The usual tea and chit chat happened and we knew pretty much of what was going on in each other's lives without 'Whatsapp'. Meanwhile we as children had books, comics, board games, outdoor sports, etc. We used to grow our general knowledge not through Google, but through the likes of Encyclopaedia Britannica, World Book, Children's Knowledge Bank, etc. The library was literally a phenomenal place to be. TV was just the occasional comedy serial like Dekh Bhai Dekh or Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi on Friday, a half an hour programme on songs. The only ‘binging’ we did was on a Sunday morning, and even that was frowned upon by our parents as ‘too much time on the idiot box’!

There will be some of you who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and traversed that entire journey – starting with how the mobile became a radical tool of communication that we all marveled at. Little did we know then that it would take over our lives in the manner that it has today. From a few essential features like calling, messaging, clock, scheduler, etc, it now encompasses so much – shopping, social media, games, video calling, Youtube, OTT, mailing, Reels, payments, investments, travel bookings, Search and now ChatGPT, Whatsapp, gambling, business promotion – a virtually endless and ever growing list. I used to think the laptop was making us lazier, but people often do not want to open their laptop for work; they are happy moving and sliding their fingers on the touchscreen.

The purpose of this Human Intelligence Newsletter has been to ‘recognize and realise human intelligence in the age of AI’. At the very outset, I had discussed how, every time technology has disrupted human lives and livelihoods, there have been losses and pain, but mankind has evolved and adapted. But while I am confident that the same will be inevitable even going forward, we would be naïve to consider this phase of technology disruption like anything we have seen in the past.

The competition is not human vs AI; it is now going to be a competition between humans and how best they can utilize AI tools to get ahead and stay ahead. But while we are preparing for the disruption of AI, we have already gone through a major disruptive phase in our life due to technology. The argument of the AI developers is that their tools are getting better and more intelligent by the minute. There would be many blogs and posts today telling you what several AI tools that improve your productivity and several more that are emerging.

Undoubtedly those inputs are invaluable. However, there will be fewer that will tell you how overreliance on these tools may make you highly dependent on them. This kind of convenience comes at a very high cost – you would lose the very important incentive to keep growing your ‘human capabilities’, just like Google made acquiring knowledge kind of redundant (not for those who create new knowledge though). You may become great at operating AI, but will your HI stay intact?

While this is a question that time will answer better, I would like to point out some of the major areas where human intelligence has suffered over the past 20-30 years due to technology:

The power of concentration

Technology has gone way past the threshold of information and entertainment that a human being can take. And it has taken away a lot of our focus as well. Professor Gloria Mark, Department of Informatics at the University of California admitted that email, social media, notifications and countless other digital distractions are eroding our ability to concentrate on individual tasks in the 21st Century.

In her study, where they kept stopwatches to monitor every action of IT workers, it was found that they switched their attention every three minutes on an average. However, that reduced to one minute 15 seconds in 2012 and further down to 59.5 seconds in 2014. In 2022, that time had gone further down to 45 seconds.  

Social media platforms provide instant gratification, but lowers attention spans when focusing on deeper and more meaningful content. Even TV is considered uninteresting today in front of Tik Tok like platforms that provide highly engaging short form content. It may not be long before T20 cricket becomes T10 or even T5!

Reduced memory retention

Jim Kwik is a prominent author, speaker, and expert in the field of memory improvement, accelerated learning, and brain optimization. He makes several important observations on how smartphones are making people dumber, and one of his most popular examples is memorizing telephone numbers. Since it is no longer needed, we hardly remember them. In the days of the traditional telephone, we used to have a telephone directory marked A to Z where people used to enter the numbers of their friends, relatives, connections, etc. And we used to remember numbers quite well. But now we do not.

Cyber security company Kaspersky Lab conducted a survey of 6,000 mobile phone users. The results revealed that around 71% of them can’t remember the phone numbers of their children and 87% can’t recollect the phone numbers of their children’s schools. Some of the respondents even admitted that losing their Smartphone will cause them to forget what they’ve been up to!

Medical practitioners advise us time and again to be conscious of our smartphone usage, and have coined a term called digital amnesia. Use of the smartphone is known to cause disrupted sleep, cognitive dysfunction and the inability to remember things. The brain is meant to be challenged and remember information. By offloading information to our devices, are we compromising the powers of our brain?

The cost of unhealthy addiction

This is an area of definite concern for a number of reasons. It started with the possible linkages with the impact of the radio frequency energy emitted by mobile phones. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified mobile phone radiation to be possibly carcinogenic. So far, research does not seem to indicate a positive correlation, since 2G, 3G, 4G and even 5G waves fall into the non-ionising range of the spectrum. Scientists assure us that it is too low to damage DNA unlike X-rays, radon, cosmic rays, etc.

But there are many other issues we need to be concerned about. Too much time spent looking down at your phone causes text neck syndrome, thereby straining your muscles and causing tightness/spasms. The same is true when you pinch the phone between your head and neck. I still wonder how scooter and bike riders acquired this skill. Even more, I wonder why, when hands free options are available!

If you can, it's way better to surf waves rather than the internet at night! Excess light after sunst is damaging to your sleep, which is linked to diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and other health problems.

A more peculiar problem is too much texting can get your thumb stuck in a bent position, and pops painfully when you straighten it. A greater risk is that the shorter wavelength of blue light emitted by mobiles can tire your eyes and be painful. Worse still, prolonged exposure can damage your eyes.

A research titled Excessive Smartphone Use Is Associated With Health Problems in Adolescents and Young Adults by Yehuda Wacks & Aviv M. Weinstein lists several such worrying health issues:

• Comorbidity (simultaneous presence of two or more diseases) with depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD and alcohol use disorder
• Difficulties in cognitive-emotion regulation
• Impulsivity, impaired cognitive function, addiction to social networking, shyness and low self-esteem.
• Sleep problems, reduced physical fitness, unhealthy eating habits, pain and migraines
• Reduced cognitive control and changes in the brain's gray matter volume.

Creating things with your hands

Publishing everything on the web has made us way better typists than writers (that was a profession around 50 years ago!). But writing has enormous benefits. I have previously pointed to flaws in the education system, but I would never want schools to move kids to tablets and computers early in life, be it for reading (audio books are literally killing it, but is it good?), writing, painting or calculating. Playing should be on the field and not on the Xbox and depriving children of playgrounds at the expense of development is ‘criminal’.

Take writing for instance. It is the best way to learn concepts and keep them in your mind. I remember experiencing this when I used to make notes for my exams in the library. Our teachers always encouraged us to make our own notes, and it really worked wonders. Writing by hand enables better long- and short-term memory recall as it engages many parts of your brain simultaneously.

Neurobiologist Barry Gordon wrote a column in Scientific American where he lists the following benefits of writing:

• You develop organizational skills — from crafting and sequencing your thoughts and ideas
• You boost your reasoning and problem-solving skills
• You integrate a wide range of vocabulary words and grow your word bank

When you write with pen and paper, your conceptual understanding improves, since it is slower and you automatically process what you are writing. It improves your literacy and reading comprehension skills. With the benefits of neuroplasticity, writing will change your brain and enhance both your focus and productivity.

So remember, no matter how smart ChatGPT gets, when you have to learn a new skill – make it a point to use your pen and paper. You need to discern where AI is truly necessary and where it is making you dependent and hampering your mental growth.

Thousands of connections, but disconnected

This comes back to the example of the ‘Whatsapp group’ we had in the 1980s. People used to actually meet up with each other and have very engaging conversations. From an entire community to joint families to nuclear families, we have continued to dissociate and shrunk our world. Now it has come to the stage where a house has 3-4 TVs and every family member is in his/her own personal world.

 People who smiled when they were alone were called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media! Mokokoma Mokhonoana (Writer)

Being present is not much use if you are not engaged, and this malady has traversed our personal as well as professional life. Boss to employee, worker to co-worker, client to seller, everyone seems to be caught up in this trap without realizing it.  

You may feel that you and your smartphone have a personal space. But guess what, you yourself are so distracted by whatever technology feeds you that you lose control of your own narrative.

As I said earlier, the information, the connections and the entertainment that technology provides is far more than we humans can take. That is why it is important for us to exercise our judgement and draw a line on which inputs we accept and which ones we let go. To get AI to work for us, Human Intelligence needs to not just be conserved, but grow manifolds. The choice is always ours, and we must choose wisely!

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