Are We (Literally) Losing Our Minds to Technology?

Illustration source: Huffpost.com

Every civilization morphs. We evolve. But could we be devolving?

100 years ago, most adults could cook, sew, farm, hunt, even perform light carpentry. Back then, most leisure activities and vocations required physicality and mental focus we no longer “need” in the automation age.  

People interacted with the world profoundly differently than we do today. Take the handling of physical cash: According to a Pew survey, 41% of Americans no longer use it. 79% of Americans don’t balance their checkbooks, and 55% don’t even know their balance.

Ask a clerk to count your change back and most don’t even know how. Why? 93% of Americans have math anxiety. Or take reading books. The Washington Post reports only 28% of Americans read for pleasure, and for only 17 minutes a day at that.

What is happening to our brains and to our skills? They are decaying.

Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of University College London performed a study that found London cab drivers once had enlarged brains from having to commit so many routes to memory:

To earn their licenses, cab drivers in training spend three to four years driving around the city on mopeds, memorizing a labyrinth of 25,000 streets within a 10-kilometer radius of Charing Cross train station, as well as thousands of tourist attractions and hot spots….

Maguire discovered that London taxi drivers had more gray matter in their posterior hippocampi than people who were similar in age, education, and intelligence, but who did not drive taxis. In other words, taxi drivers had plumper memory centers than their peers.

Okay, fine. But what happens when you don’t exercise your grey matter—for instance, when you always rely on your phone’s GPS to get where you are going? Your brain diminishes in its capabilities.

This is a big problem. It’s been shown our IQ is retracting at a rate of 7 points per generation, according to this report.

The purveyors of tech promised many things—that innovations would grant us more leisure, that they would also enable us to be more productive.

But what if recent advancements are devolving us?

Journalist Jessica Stillman summarizes it like this: “… we have started building a more stupidity-inducing environment."

Look around you. Are the people you interact with more or less capable than they once were? Sadly, all signs point to the latter.

Here’s an example: Whenever I speak to large groups I ask the room, “Who here can perform long division in their heads?”

Most people older than me can do it. They came from an age in which humans didn’t rely on mental crutches like calculators. Those younger than me generally can’t do this computation. They’re also typically unable to read or write cursive as it’s no longer taught in most schools.

It gets worse.

With the use of ChatGPT exploding, many youngsters don’t see the need to read or write anymore. Why bother when AI can summarize Moby Dick for you—and write your book report?

But there’s more to reading and writing than just the physical acts. When we read something and then write about it, we develop critical thinking skills. We also learn to objectify our thoughts.

Speaking of mental exercising, imagine a world 20 years from now, one in which a new generation doesn’t know how to do anything for themselves—farm, cook, hunt, build, sew, read, write, garden, etc.

Not only that, but they also don’t bother to read the good books. Instead, they spend their time online, being entertained by TikTok or playing video games. Worse yet, they do so in the 3-dimensional Metaverse, physically apart from other humans. Can you see how easy it would be to control such a population—especially if you threatened to cut off their WIFI?

It's almost too depressing to imagine. But we must if we wish to turn around our culture—to restore our civilization before it’s too late.