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A recent (August, 2010) NY Times front-page story described a trip taken by five neuroscientists to investigate how the heavy use of digital devices influences our thinking and behavior, and whether a retreat away from technology might reverse some of the increasingly recognized noxious effects on attention, memory, and learning. In some respects this article crystallized the essence of Dr. Small's short, dramatically titled volume: All the Wondrous Technological Information Gadgetry That We Embrace as Routine Aspects of Life Are Not Without Considerable Risk to our Brains and Functioning as Human Beings: There's no free lunch in Cyberspace.
While this paperback has a casual, pulpy, mass-market feel to it, such that a review for a sophisticated, highly specialized journal might seem inappropriate, the content is of such importance and relevance to psychotherapeutic work that it certainly bears reading. The authors take the stance that there exists a vast generational gap in brain function between younger individuals (Digital Natives—those who grew up in a computing age) and the Baby Boomers (the so-called Digital Immigrants, whose brains and thought patterns developed pre-digitally). This brain “gap” between generations would seem to require older brains to adapt to the newer, high technology norms if the older generations are to avoid falling behind—socially, politically, and economically.
But the prices being paid for growing up in a digital universe—shortening attention spans, impaired learning and memory, possibly higher incidence of ADD, addictive problems, and an interpersonal awkwardness and ignorance (so accustomed are many to email, texting, and chat communication that face to face becomes foreign) are high and suggest that there is much for Digital Natives to learn about modulating their technology use, just as the Digital Immigrants need to adapt to some of this technology as well.
Dr. Small and his co-author, his spouse, take us on a whirlwind tour of techn