It’s that feeling of short-term overload that’s really letting the internet affect us. When you’re writing a paper, checking Facebook, looking at Twitter, getting an email ding, well that’s your four thing limit. You’re always putting yourself into a place where you’re overloading and swapping stuff in your short term memory…There’s some concern that because of the internet, we are re-wiring our brains to constantly scan for information rather than taking it in, losing our ability for long-term memorization.
The use of technology has also provided us with with a new type of generation gap specific to the digital age. According to Dr. Gary Small, author of iBrain: Surviving the Technical Alteration of the Modern Mind, there are two sets of users; the natives and the immigrants and how the wiring of the brain differs between the two groups.
Digital natives — young people born into a world of laptops and cell phones, text messaging and twittering — spend an average of 8 1/2 hours each day exposed to digital technology. This exposure is rewiring their brain’s neural circuitry, heightening skills like multi-tasking, complex reasoning and decision-making, Small said. But there’s a down side: All that tech time diminishes “people” skills, including important emotional aptitudes like empathy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, digital immigrants, born into a world of pocket calendars you penciled dates into and letters that got sent in the mail, have to work hard to embrace technology without the already-developed brain form and function. The good news, Small said, is that the flexible brain is eminently trainable. – UCLA Today
Good news indeed.