How Our Brains Are Affected by Info Overload

It’s become a truism that our interactions with technology are changing the way we think and act. But the big question is how exactly we’re being changed. Some say it’s evolving us into higher functioning humans, while others claim our hyper-multitasking and reliance on technology as an outboard brain is dumbing us way down.

Another missive from the negative camp has come around -Maggie Jackson, Author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, says that our ability to deeply focus and pay attention is being swept away by our “cybercentric” society.

She claims that attention is hard-wired into our brains, a discrete “organ system” even, and that the current tech-enabled culture of interruption and distraction may be disabling our ability to concentrate and think creatively. Even more concerning is her assertion that we’re also wired towards interruption.

Jackson explains to Wired why we’re predisposed to distraction and how it affects us:

We are programmed to be interrupted. We get an adrenalin jolt when orienting to new stimuli: Our body actually rewards us for paying attention to the new. So in this very fast-paced world, it’s easy and tempting to always react to the new thing. But when we live in a reactive way, we minimize our capacity to pursue goals.

…This degree of interruption is correlated with stress and frustration and lowered creativity. That makes sense. When you’re scattered and diffuse, you’re less creative. When your times of reflection are always punctured, it’s hard to go deeply into problem-solving, into relating, into thinking.

…Interruptions are correlated with stress, and a cascade of stress hormones accompany that state of being. Stress, frustration and lowered creativity are pretty toxic. And there are studies showing how the environment shapes brain development in kids.

So, how then to best handle the digital distraction avalanche? Jackson says we need to re-shape and streamline our environment to encourage focus and quiet. Which is great advice -but for those of us that live, whether out of desire or necessity, in a constantly shifting info-stream, the challenge is how to maintain focus even if it’s for really short bursts of time.

Wired: “Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains”