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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 (www.health.state.mn.us/…/cdrr/obesity/tvviewing/tvscreeninfo.html) , 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. 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.

Although media may be very useful in distributing information to the public, it heavily contributes to neurological overstimulation. Doctor Richard Restak writes “Crawlers, in short, were intended to capture our attention and forewarn us of the possible need for prompt action. But now, the crawler has become ubiquitous, forcing an ongoing split in our attention, a constant state of distraction and divided focus” to express his frustration with the news channels’

 

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crawlers. 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 use 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.” Restak mentions these many activities because these are the many choices we are faced 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 portrayed to be. According to Doctor Richard 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

 

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both at once. And, most important, these shifts decrease rather than increase your efficiency; they are time and energy depleting.” Along with the lack of efficiency of multitasking, Restak explains the neurological science behind it, “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.” 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. 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.” Journalist Sam Anderson is expressing that multitasking is a part of our everyday life, but it is actually negatively affecting our neurological capabilities. Within the chapter  “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era” in the book “The New Brain”, Doctor Richard Restak writes “Other times, the cost of multitasking can be much less amusing. Imagine yourself driving

 

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in light traffic on a clear day while chatting on a cell phone with a friend. You are having no problem handling your vehicle and also keeping up your end of the conversation. But over the next five minutes you encounter heavier traffic and the onset of a torrential rainstorm. Your impulse is to end the conversation and pay more attention to the road, but your friend on the other end of the line keeps talking. After all, he is not encountering the same hazardous conditions from the comfort of his office or home. You continue to talk a bit longer, shifting your attention between your friend’s patter and the rapidly deteriorating road conditions. As a result, you fail to notice that the tractor – trailer to your right is starting to slide in your direction…. Your survivors will never know that your divided attention, with its accompanying decrease in brain efficiency, set you up for that fatal accident.” In this quote, Restak is sharing a story. This story is about the dangers of multitasking. Multitasking is clearly an issue in our society and culture.

ADD/ADHD is becoming a much more prevalent disorder in the 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” within the book “The New Brain”, Doctor Richard 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, attention deficit disorder is becoming

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epidemic in both children and adults. This is unlikely to turn out to be a temporary condition” 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.

Throughout our daily lives we are forced to use technology and multitask. That is the society we live in today, that is the future. 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 writes “ 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. 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 “The truly wise mind will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction. Unwavering focus – the inability to be distracted – can actually be just as problematic as ADHD. Trouble with “attentional shift” is a feature common to a handful of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and OCD. It’s been hypothesized that ADHD might even be an advantage in certain change-rich

 

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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 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 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 of too much from our neurological system. Cultural influences and societal norms lead to unnecessary neurological stress. Even if we’re evolving toward our future, too much overstimulation at once is not necessary.

REVISIONS – Site quotes and info properly (Intro – ask how to cite the 20 hours to make it flow smoothly) (author, pg #); Fix long paragraph; Works cited page