You've called your family for supper. Silence. You call again.
"I'll come after I beat this level," your son says.
"I just have a few important e-mails to send," your hubby says.
"Just let me finish chatting with my friends on IM," your daughter replies.
While dinner cools on the table, your family's brains are evolving faster than ever, rewiring and building new neural pathways to respond to technology but leaving those wired for in-person chit-chat to fester, says Gary Small in his new book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, co-authored by his wife, Gigi Vorgan.
Dr. Small spoke with The Globe and Mail about how he feels technology is altering the physical makeup of our brains and changing the way we interact with one another.
You say that as people become more tech-savvy, they risk becoming less able to have a proper face-to-face conversation. Are we fated to become social zombies?
I hope not. I think there's definitely evidence that when we spend more time with the technology we spend less time talking face-to-face. There's a very recent study finding young people who play video games were less able to recognize the emotional expression from a face - whether it was angry or happy. My answer is balance.
I say turn off the computers and the [personal digital assistants] at a certain time every night and enjoy your family, your friends.
In iBrain, you compare Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Who are they?
Teenagers and young adults today would be considered Digital Natives. Digital Immigrants are those who come to [technology] later in life, who had more face-to-face human contact time growing up.
What is the biggest difference you've seen in the brains of those born into a world of technology and those who've had to adapt?
As the brain ages, it goes through developmental steps. There's a process in young people of pruning, meaning that a lot of the neural networks are kind of pruned away, are never used. Sixty per cent of the brain synapses are pruned away during development. And the teenage brain is not as empathetic. Without the face-to-face time learning to read the subtle, non-verbal social cues, we are going to miss out on some of the empathy building that's traditionally learned during adolescence.
How does clacking away on BlackBerrys or sitting in front of the computer for hours mess with the way our brains are wired?
Whether you're looking at a book page, whether you're looking at your computer screen or whether you're talking to your friend, there's stimulation that goes through the senses. A whole network of neural circuits and synapses are triggered. That leads to a complex array of neurochemical and electrical reactions in the brain. When we repeat an activity over and over again, specialized circuits develop and get stronger. The concern is if we're repeatedly doing an activity, those circuits will be strengthened, yet we will neglect others that may be important in our lives.
You say the brain is evolving to respond to technology. How? And doesn't evolution take thousands of years and involve handing down genes through generations?
[The brain] does take time to truly evolve, but I think in terms of the concepts of who's going to adapt to this new technology, we're seeing an evolutionary change. Those people who are adept at figuring out the tools and working with it, they're going to do better. The Digital Natives in many ways are doing much better.
So how can we control technology and not let it control us?
I think we're trying to help bridge the brain gap essentially by upgrading the technology skills of the Digital Immigrants and helping younger Digital Natives with their face-to-face contact skills. Think about when is it time to end the e-mail conversations and pick up the phone or walk down the hall and talk to your colleague face-to-face. I think having an appreciation of the differences is important. Also to take breaks and not just have contact with other people, but to be by yourself - to take walks outside, to converse, to try to balance your technology time with your offline time.
How can you tell your social skills are failing because of tech-overload?
Ask a few questions, see if it is an issue for you. Do you tend to hide your technology use from others? Does it seem to interfere with your ordinary life? Do you miss it when you don't have it? I've had people call me, they check into a hotel in New York and they're in a panic because the server's down.
So how can we adapt without throwing our computers out the window?
We need to first recognize that the technology train is here and it's moving forward rapidly. We each need to understand where we should focus our efforts to improve the quality of our lives, whether it's cutting back on our technology, improving our tech skills, [or] working a little harder to connect offline or not.
