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Anthony Langella
English 110-C
Professor Emerson
October 12, 2017
Neurological Stress
40 hours at a desk job and 20 hours of screen time (“Television Screen Time and Health”) , roughly 60 of the 168 hours in a week, nearly 36% of the week, is spent on technology. Journalist Sam Anderson and Medical Doctor Richard Restak discuss the mental consequences of our distracted digital world throughout their writings, “In Defense of Distraction” and “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era.” Multitasking and technological use all play a huge part in the culture and societal norms of the 21st century world. Granted all of this technology, multitasking, and other neurologically stressful activities are a part of everyday life in today’s world, such as school work, social media, TV, texting, and even banking, it is still neurologically stressful. Cultural influences and societal norms in terms of digital information lead to unnecessary neurological stress on young minds.
Although media may be very useful in distributing information to the public, it heavily contributes to neurological overstimulation, especially for young adults. To express his frustration with the news channels’ crawlers Doctor Richard Restak writes, “Crawlers, in short, were intended to capture our attention and forewarn us of the possible need for prompt action.
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But now, the crawler has become ubiquitous, forcing an ongoing split in our attention, a constant state of distraction and divided focus” ( 373). The crawlers of the news station are an example of how the media causes unnecessary neurological stimulation. The crawlers force your brain to work harder to focus on multiple aspects at once, which can cause people to over stress their brain. A great metaphor for this neurological overstimulation is that your brain is like a car, the more you stress it the value decreases and the lack of production skyrockets.
All of us can say that at some point we have been faced with many choices due to culture, societal norms, and/or technology. Doctor Richard Restak demonstrates that mindless activities can cause unnoticed neurological overstimulation when he says:
We watch a story for a few minutes and then switch over to a basketball game until we become bored with that, and then move on to animal planet. Feeling Restless, we may then pick up the phone and talk to a co-worker about topics likely to come up at
tomorrow’s work meeting while simultaneously directing our attention to a weather report on TV or flipping through our mail. (374)
Restak mentions these many activities because these are the many choices we are faced with on a daily basis. Deciding what show to watch, who to call, etc. These little choices all add up to negatively affect our neurological health.
Amongst the numerous choices we face daily and the inescapable media we seem to attract, due to our culture we are forced to multitask everyday. Multitasking isn’t as efficient as
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portrayed to be. According to Restak, “Whenever you attempt to do two things at once, your attention at any given moment is directed to one or the other activity rather than to
both at once. And, most important, these shifts decrease rather than increase your efficiency; they are time and energy depleting” (381) Along with the lack of efficiency of multitasking, Restak explains the neurological science behind it when he writes:
With each switch in attention, your frontal lobes – the executive control centers towards the front of your brain – must shift goals and activate new rules of operation. Talking on the phone and doing a crossword puzzle activate different parts of the brain, engage
different muscles, and induce different sensory experiences. In addition, the shift from one activity to another can take up to seven – tenths of a second (382).
Granted we are faced with multitasking every day, it’s clearly not efficient. The fact that we multitask daily heavily contributes to our neurological stress and that of young minds. We are using many different parts of the brain to try and complete multiple tasks. In reality, taking on one task at a time will be much more efficient and much less stressful on the brain. Journalist Sam Anderson in his article, “In Defense of Distraction,” writes “Over the last twenty years, Meyer and a host of other researchers have proved again and again that multitasking, at least as our culture has come to know and love and institutionalize it, is a myth. When you think you are doing two things at once, you are almost always just switching rapidly between them, leaking a little mental efficiency with every switch.” (Anderson 4) Sam Anderson is expressing that
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multitasking is a part of our everyday life, but it is actually negatively affecting our neurological capabilities.
Within Restak’s “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era”, he mentions a story pertaining a fatal accident due to technology distracting a driver and how multitasking can truly be fatal. After October 19, 2017, I completely agree with Restak. That night I was driving
many people back and forth to the Old Port in Portland. It was a cold and dark night out. I was sailing down the highway at 80 MPH, clearly nothing in my path. I looked down at my phone for less than a second just to change the song on the AUX. As soon as I look up, less than 20 feet in front of me there was a deer in the middle lane on the 95. I slammed on my breaks, veered my car left, praying that the deer was not going to run my direction. I turned so quick I felt my car tip. I slammed my steering wheel in the opposite direction, hoping that it would put me right on course. Luckily, it did. All it took was for me to change the song twice, and I would have nailed that deer going 80 MPH. Multitasking truly can be fatal.
ADD/ADHD is becoming a much more prevalent disorder in young people today than that of the generation before. The primary contributor to the issue of the increased prevalence of ADD/ADHD amongst the people of today is the neurological overstimulation caused by our society’s norms, cultural influences, and the immense technological usage. In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era” Restak writes “As a result of increasing demands on our attention and focus, our brains try to adapt by rapidly shifting attention from one activity to another – a strategy that is now almost a requirement for survival. As a consequence,
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attention deficit disorder is becoming an epidemic in both children and adults. This is unlikely to turn out to be a temporary condition.” (Restak 376) Restak is writing about how technology, multitasking, societal and cultural influences are all affecting our neurological systems. These activities are causing an increase in the amount of people suffering from attention deficit disorder.
Some may argue throughout our daily lives we are forced to use technology and multitask. That is the society we live in today, that is the future. They may also argue that all of these negative effects that are currently being enacted by our societal and cultural influences may actually pan out to be positive effects in the future. Thomas King is a young australian man, who won young australian of the year and gave a speech at Tedx Melbourne. In Thomas King’s Tedx Talk, he says, “ Forty – four percent of jobs today won’t exist in twenty years and sixty – five percent of jobs in fifteen years don’t yet exist.” King is saying that times are changing. King is suggesting that many of the jobs in today’s world will soon be technology or multitasked based. Evidently, if that is the case, all the neurological stress we go through now will help us evolve to be able to become more efficient in handling those jobs and our future. This idea of evolving to be better for the future is also present in journalist Sam Anderson’s article “In Defense of Distraction”. In this article Sam Anderson writes:
It’s been hypothesized that ADHD might even be an advantage in certain change-rich environments. Researchers have discovered, for instance, that a brain receptor associated with ADHD is usually common among certain nomads in Kenya, and that members who
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have the receptor are the best nourished in the group. It’s possible that we are all evolving toward a new techno-cognitive nomadism, a rapidly shifting environment in which restlessness will be an advantage again. (Anderson 12)
Anderson and King may differ in their ideals of an evolutionary future, but they are both the same when it comes to the type of “restlessness” future.
Between the unthinkable amount of time spent on technology, the time spent on multitasking, or even the time spent on leisure activities. In today’s world, we are asking too much from our neurological system. Cultural influences and societal norms lead to unnecessary neurological stress, especially with young minds. Even if we’re evolving toward our future, too much overstimulation at once is not necessary.
Anthony,
I think you’ve written a clear, well-organized argument. Your claim sentences relate to your thesis. Your evidence supports your claims. You explain your quotes and your argument proceeds in a logical manner. Fantastic work!
As you work on your last paper, I want you to continue to strive for specificity. Know exactly what you mean when you write about abstractions like “social norms” and “culture.” When you write about big ideas, strive to articulate exactly how those big ideas relate. I think that identifying and articulating relationships is one of the major challenges in this class (and many classes). Start honing the skill now!
I also want you to take time to develop your closing paragraph. You just wrote a great argument. Your closing paragraph is your opportunity to get in your “one-last-thing.”
Keep improving and please see me with any questions!
Grade: A-
Text to self and bringing your own thought into the paper. Paper as a holistic thing. Thinking about the text from your own experience. Text to self correlation.
Philosophy of revision starts in head and i just dive in.
Don’t use outline, only make one for class
-Eportfolio/Framing statement stuff
Langella/ Neurological Stress
Works Cited
Restak, Richard. “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era.” Emerging: Comtemporary Readings for Writers, edited by Barclay Barrios. 3rd ed., Bedford/St. Martin, 2016, pp 198-213.
King, Thomas. “Adults, we need to have the talk.” Youtube. TEDx Melbourne, Nov 2015. Web. September 2017.
Anderson, Sam. “In Defense of Distraction.” New York Magazine, May 2009, pp. 12.
