As a clinical neuropsychologist, I see patients
presenting with a variety of cognitive complaints. With increasing
frequency, adults arrive in my clinic asking to be evaluated for adult
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Adult ADHD is a slippery
diagnosis, to be sure, yet the nature of these patients seems to have morphed
in the past few years. What once were patients with a clear developmental
history of behavioral and learning problems and persistent difficulties with
focus, executive functioning, and mood regulation now are more commonly mothers and fathers in their
early 30s who maintain steady employment, but worry about their jobs, yet have
no convincing developmental history. They
describe distractibility, forgetfulness, and mental cloudiness. At home, they feel frazzled, flitting from
one task to another, feeling unaccomplished in all of them. Like many of us, their homes are filled with
electronic distractions—Facebook, YouTube, e-mail, text messaging, Internet
chat, and television to name a few.
Two
recent books have touched directly touched upon the trend that I am seeing
clinically—increased access to and utilization of technology contributing to a
distracted reality. In The Shallows (2010), Nicholas Carr
raises the question about what the Internet is doing to our brains. He rather convincingly documents the effect
of various technologies upon human behavior and cognition. Among these are the clock, the map, the written
word, and the printing press--each producing a subsequent change in how people
process information and respond to their environment. Naturally, his exploration of ancient
technologies progresses to a thorough discussion of modern “conveniences” such
as the Internet. Carr traces patterns of
writing, noting a general degradation of the written word as a means of
communication. Even traditional
publishing methods have gone the way of the Internet with books now providing
snippets of disconnected information rather than well-constructed, but perhaps
cognitively challenging, prose. It seems
people are no longer interested or willing to engage with works such as War and Peace (or dare I say The Foundations of Soul Care), yet Carr
goes further, suggesting that we may be losing the capacity to read deeply because of the increasing reliance upon the
Internet and its disconnected presentation of information. Carr writes,
“One thing is clear: if,
knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you were to set out to
invent a medium that would rewire mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as
possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a
lot like the Internet. It’s not just
that we tend to use the Net regularly, even obsessively. It’s that the Net
delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli—repetitive,
intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and
rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions.” (p. 116).
He
then goes on to describe several studies, from well-known researchers that
document how actual cognitive and cerebral changes are taking place.
The Shallows (which was ranked one of
Tim Challies top books of 2010) seems to have had a significant influence upon
Challies’s book, The Next Story
(2011). Challies, a prolific Christian
blogger, has written with some regularity about the influence of technology in
the church body. The Next Story is his attempt to impart Biblical wisdom to issues
surrounding the spread of technology. Like
Carr, Challies has a dual awareness of technology’s influence, both as a writer
and as a user of modern media. He
presents a theological and practical analysis of how to make wise use of modern
media, like Carr pointing to several benefits and potential drawbacks. As a Christian, he also appropriately
addresses the issue of making an idol of technology. Neither author flatly rejects the use of
computers or the Internet, nor do they encourage blind acceptance.
Proverbs
17:14 reads, “the discerning sets his
face toward wisdom, but the eyes of the fool are on the ends of the earth.” The Internet, in many ways may provide us
with an opportunity to look to the “ends of the earth.” As we consider new technologies, we need to
cautiously consider any wholesale acceptance of those new technologies, knowing
that they may have untoward consequences such as diminished focus, increased
forgetfulness, and a loss of wisdom. On
the other hand, we should avoid the Luddite tendency to villanize all
technologies as inherently bad. Rather,
we need to search the Scriptures diligently to understand how God wants us to
interact with our ever changing world.
As
counselors, we will increasingly encounter clients whose lives are deeply
affected by the Internet. We are already
aware of a host of issues in the church—Internet pornography, adultery with old
flames rekindled, depression, bullying, and distractibility. Carr and Challies have provided a pair of
important books addressing very real issues that we will see on an increasing
basis as counselors. I would commend
them both to aid in understanding the effect of technology in our lives.
However,
they will require focus.
References
Carr,
N. (2010). The shallows: What the
Internet is doing to our brains. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Challies,
T. (2011). The next story: Life and faith after the digital explosion. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan.
Jason
Kanz, PhD, ABPP
Marshfield Clinic
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