Dr. Sue Varma

And it's not a crude dementia.

But what we do see is that all of the symptoms in older adults of attention span decreasing,

of cognitive offloading, which is like, oh, I don't need to use my brain.

I can just use Google Maps.

Memory retrieval goes down.

That ability to make, synthesize both rational, logical information along with emotional information, that goes down.

Your executive functioning and your inhibition goes down.

And that's a

impulse control that you need to control in order to not use your phone.

And if that's gone, you don't have awareness because you don't have that impulse control and judgment.

You're going to use more, the screen more, and you're also more susceptible to scams.

So when your brain is flooded with this cheap, very temporary source of dopamine, when you post a picture and you're seeking thrills with the dopamines and the lights, which we do see in the older adults,

or even just short form video content.

We're losing our attention spans.

We are offloading memory.

What you need at this time is a mental workout.

And just the way the muscle is your organ of longevity, right?

Your brain is as well.

Totally.

And one of the things that I'm seeing is that in midlife, there's this idea that if you want to predict somebody's health at 80,