Dr. Richard Cytowic
speaker
37 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Dr. Richard Cytowic’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Young individuals who have a very high screen exposure show symptoms that are similar to developmental autism. They refuse to make eye contact. They have reduced language. They have reduced social interaction.
Well, today's brain is no different from those of our distant ancestors millions of years ago. It hasn't evolved one iota. And so we are still faced with the same restrictions and liabilities that our distant ancestors faced. And this is a problem when we're faced with the overabundance of screens. These limitations and restrictions on our brain are things like what?
I think what's going to surprise most people is that our brain has a fixed limit of energy available. I mean, most people don't think about when they're saying, oh, I'm addicted to my phone. They don't think about it in terms of what their brain is doing, but people like me who are trained in neurology and neuropsychology, we think about these issues of the brain's point of view all the time.
And so the brain has a limited amount of energy available. And no amount of diet, exercise, Sudoku puzzles or supplements is going to be able to change that. There's a limited amount of energy and attention that you can devote at any one time. And the Stone Age brain evolved in a much simpler time of limited resources in a struggle survival.
And now it's being bombarded by this relentless amount of sensation thrown at it. And it simply can't handle it.
It's simply overload, is that we feel exhausted and frustrated and tired all the time that we can't keep up. So we're asking it to do things that it simply never evolved to do.
The thing that makes the smartphone so addictive is the companies have really honed in on what psychology calls positive intermittent reinforcement. And this is the same thing that slot machines use.
is that you know you're playing a slot machine and you get you get a minor hit then get a medium head then you get a larger hit and you keep you keep putting money into the machine hoping to get a big jackpot and this is what scrolling and you know the thing so the scroll is what i call the infinite scroll there's no end to the scroll you just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling
So you got a little hit of something interesting or amusing or meaningful or important. And so you keep scrolling, hoping for something bigger and a bigger hit. And it never comes. And that's how they have us hooked.
But often for many people, there isn't anything better to do. They're bored and they're looking for stimulation. I mean, we have associated the phone with pleasure. I mean, it gives us all these really pleasurable things and in a way, frightening, I think.
They won't. then they have become wholly captive to this tech industrial complex. And so they are now at the mercy of a third party who determines what they will see, what they will think, how they will feel.
Well, one of the things that really concerns me is virtual autism, which you see particularly in younger individuals. And that is young individuals who have a very high screen exposure show symptoms that are similar to developmental autism. That is, they refuse to make eye contact. They have reduced language. They have reduced social interaction.
This has been shown in a number of different studies that the greater the screen exposure, the greater the social isolation, the greater the lack of eye contact and the deeper the loss of language.
and what is remarkable is that unlike developmental autism if you take the screens away these symptoms reverse and these have been shown that you know kids have been who have been shipped away to camp where there's no screens of any kind and after just five days all of a sudden they start talking to one another and interacting socially
so i mean i've seen this firsthand my nephew had a birthday party and a friend of his his son was there and he's playing with with his games and he has a battery pack because obviously he's gaming a great deal of time and the mother says say hello to richard he said i did um so you all you get is grunts you get if you get if you get any reaction at all the best you get is grunts you don't get any kind of human interaction
So that's what I see as one of the biggest kinds of things. And then some parents think that the iPad is marvelous because their kids are interacting with it and it keeps them quiet. And so mommy doesn't have to worry about it and all that. But the iPad is the worst babysitter of all time.
And to put it in front of a child, in front of an infant or a toddler is, I think, a form of child abuse because what you're doing is you're blocking the developing central vision that they would normally be experiencing in the real world by crawling around and putting everything in their mouth and having a visual apprenticeship with the world.
And you're blocking it and replacing it with mediated screen images. And by mediated, I mean artificial ones. So iPad characters, as cartoonish or wonderful as they may be, they don't talk to children, they talk at them. And that's not the same thing as an adult talking to them in full sentences and engaging them one-on-one. To an infant, nothing is more fascinating than a human face.
Every parent knows this. Their eyes lock on it. And they do not lock on an iPad in the same way. And don't forget that the brain is undergoing a huge amount of transformation in the first three years of life. And then again, around puberty, there's an enormous reconfiguration. Just as the body changes, the brain is changing in the same way, but we never think about it that way.
And it doesn't stop until about age 25. So putting these artificial devices in front of people, I think does real harm.
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