1/ Research suggestion
.@BrianRoemmele has recently argued in his "Fork in the Road" series that the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and widespread adoption of smartphones since then has fundamentally rewired their user's brain structure. I think we should conduct
.@BrianRoemmele has recently argued in his "Fork in the Road" series that the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and widespread adoption of smartphones since then has fundamentally rewired their user's brain structure. I think we should conduct
2/ Neuroimaging studies to see if there has in fact been a rewiring of the brains of smartphone users.
In his book "The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous," Joseph Henrich makes a persuasive
In his book "The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous," Joseph Henrich makes a persuasive
3/ case that Culture, independent of the biological evolutionary process, does "alter our brains, hormones, and anatomy, along with our perceptions, motivations, personalities, emotions, and many other aspects of our minds." He argues that the proof of this can be found by
4/ examining the physical effects that literacy has on our “biology and psychology without altering the underlying genetic code.” Adults, on average, in highly literate society have “thicker corpus callosa and worse facial recognition” than a society where literacy was low.
5/ In other words, literacy literally changed the physical composition of human brains.
Might we not expect to see similar changes if we conducted studies comparing the brains of habitual smartphone users with a control group that didn't use them? Now, obviously, researchers
Might we not expect to see similar changes if we conducted studies comparing the brains of habitual smartphone users with a control group that didn't use them? Now, obviously, researchers
6/ in academia and elsewhere would need to build a robust model to do this, but isn't this something we all should know? when looking at social media, I often joke that we're conducting the largest psychological test in human history without a control group
7/but we're creating an interconnected, always on global communication and intelligence network and my thesis is that the changes that are already occurring as a result will probably be even more impactful on society and people than literacy was--If we as individuals are
8/ to make the best use of these changes, we need a lot more studies to see what's changing and how profund the physical changes are in our brains. The academic literature available currently seems more focused on smartphone addiction in adolescents, see for example, this:
10/ And while I didn't do an exhaustive study, there doesn't seem to be any large scale, properly designed study available looking at a much broader group of users. My pal @max_arbitrage, said "axonal imaging, Fmri, or quantitative measurements" might be the best bet to see
11/ exactly what's going on and my guess is that we'd want this to be a continuously updated research project. Would love links if there are already large scale studies available.
Onward!
Onward!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
