Are we all becoming "digitally demented"?

There is no denying it – we as a society have become reliant on technology in our daily lives. Can you imagine writing a paper without using Word’s spell checker? Or writing a text message without relying on autocorrect to avoid an awkward typo? But does overindulging in the technical conveniences of our digitalized lives mean that we are depriving ourselves of our skills?

Worries about losing our cognitive acuity thanks to technology are not completely new. Especially in South Korea, one of the most thoroughly digitalized countries in the world, physicians are concerned by what they call “digital dementia”. The concept behind this is known to all of us. Imagine our cognitive functions working like our muscles. If you don’t train them, they’ll slowly atrophy and lose strength. Take the author of this article as a warning example: According to many, map reading and spatial navigation have never figured among his strengths. The advent of satellite navigation and Google Maps, however, have made him lazy and, as a consequence, he is often seen wandering the corridors of his lab, completely disoriented.
It is easy to see why digital dementia advocates are especially worried about kids. Constant exposure to television, the internet and computer games, they claim, deprives them of “real-world experiences”. This supposedly harms their healthy development and turns them into socially disinterested loners. German weekly Der Spiegel quotes Manfred Spitzer, a psychiatrist and one of the most avid proponents of digital dementia, vowing that "(…) as shown here many times over, they [the digital media] truly do make us fat, dumb, aggressive, lonely, sick and unhappy." [1] But is this really anything more than fearmongering?

Image source: Zentrale Mediendienstleistungen, Charité (C.N.)

Dumb, aggressive, and lonely because of digital media?
Besides the obviously lurid term dementia, let’s get one thing straight first: Digital media cannot be bad per se - it depends on how you use them. If your online experience is restricted to cat videos or DIY makeup tutorials, it is easy to see why your cognitive abilities won’t benefit much. On the other hand, that is not what most people do. They use the internet to look up information, connect with friends and extend their knowledge.
Similarly, whether digital media have a positive or negative effect on kids depends on many factors, including content. Take TV shows: An easily relatable study found that watching “Dora the Explorer” was associated with better verbal skills, while Teletubbies was associated with worse verbal skills, among kids [2]. A similar case could be argued for video games, which have even been linked with improved cognitive skills [3], but depending on content, may also lead to less pro-social behavior and empathy and more aggression [4].

DORA THE EXPLORER OR TELETUBBIES?

What is more, research on this topic is methodologically tricky. This is because many variables of interest are correlated, a problem that often is not controlled for and may introduce bias. For example, it is easy to imagine that people who watch a lot of TV, on average, have lower academic achievement. Equally plausible, however, is that teens from disadvantaged backgrounds score lower grades – and watch more TV. Often, if you correct for these confounding associations statistically, the negative impact of digital media evaporates [5]. Also, many studies often assess screen time per se, lumping together exposure to any kind of electronic device. This implies that watching an hour of WWE Smackdown on TV is comparable to an hour playing online chess – and that can’t be right.

There is no good or bad – and definitely no "dementia"
So, is the story about digital dementia really grounded in facts or are these scare tactics propagated by technology-averse Luddites? Again, there is something to both sides of the coin. While undoubtedly over-relying on apps for every small juggle of mental arithmetic’s can’t be conducive to cognitive brilliance, there is no imaginable life without pocket calculators, GPS or spelling checking. More important, however, the way we use digital media determines whether they are beneficial for our grey matter or not.
There is no question that technological progress and digitalization have a huge impact on the way we grow up – also in terms of cognitive abilities. Likewise, it is obvious that something as complex and multi-sided as technology can’t be uniformly good or bad. Maybe, though, it is a good idea to give those kittens on YouTube a break and turn to something more “intellectual” – such as the many marvelous articles in this issue of the CNS Newsletter.

[1] http://bit.ly/2n3Ppbz
[2]Linebarger, Am Behav Sci, 2005
[3]Green and Seitz, Policy Insights from Behav Brain Sci, 2015
[4]Anderson et al, Psychol Bull, 2010
[5]Schmidt et al, Pediatrics, 2009


by Helge Hasselmann, PhD student AG Otte/Paul
this article originally appeared June 2017 in CNS Volume 10, Issue 2, Digital Health and Big Data