‘Revolutionary’ Thinking Needed To Save Our Brains

“Have humans passed peak brain power?” the British daily newspaper, the Financial Times, asks. It’s a stunning and troubling question considering how rapidly innovation seems to be happening across the world. 
But the root of this question points not only to a peak we may have reached, but one we may be rapidly falling from.
In a column of his published in The New York Times with the title “There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate,” Georgetown University Professor of computer science Cal Newport writes about our deteriorating thinking ability. He is also the author of “Deep Work,” a book about what it takes to focus in a world in which we are constantly distracted.
Healthy foods and regular exercise have proven to reduce a person’s chances of having a heart attack, he writes. They can reduce the chances of getting some cancers. They allow us to live a more active life. Getting a good night’s sleep is important to our overall health. Limit how much alcohol you consume and don’t smoke.
All those things can give us a happier, healthier, and longer life through revolutionary thinking by citizens and our government.
However, we’ve let our minds consume junk food, we exercise our thinking and reasoning “muscles” less, and it is showing as our mental fitness declines.
“In our current moment we face a new crisis, one that affects our minds more than our bodies: the negative impact of digital technology on our ability to think. Is it time for a new revolution?” Newport asks.
When his book was published a decade ago, Newport worried people didn’t have enough time for deep work and thought. “Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all,” he says.
Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, has done research indicating “that our attention spans are about one-third as long as they were in 2004, with the biggest drops happening around 2012,” he writes.
Our declining attention spans have consequences for our engagement with responsibilities at work, our children’s ability to learn in school, and our focus on what is meaningful in our relationships with friends and family. Studies in recent years have shown reading and math scores falling among high school graduates.
It is no coincidence that the general decline in our ability to focus, our rapidly failing discipline to read a book or longer article or listen to someone speak for more than 20 minutes has deteriorated over the last decade. 
All these problems coincide with the rapid spread of smartphones and computer tablets. As the digital attention economy exploded, our ability to concentrate imploded.
“A meta-analysis released last fall showed that consuming short-form video content, as delivered by apps like TikTok and Instagram, is associated with poorer cognition and reduced attention,” Newport writes.  Compulsive “doomscrolling” sucks up time and attention. It’s addictive. It’s an addiction that tugs at our attention even when the phone isn’t in our hand.
Artificial intelligence programming is enhancing the addictive urgency we feel to stay connected when we are attached to our electronic devices. 
“The growth of AI has brought new cognitive concerns. A study from January, based on surveys and interviews with more than 600 participants, revealed a ‘significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities,’” he writes.
AI promises to do our thinking and reasoning for us. It is already being used to substitute for study and thought. “The more we use AI in this manner, the more our cognitive fitness will continue to degrade,” Newport writes.
What happens when the building blocks of creativity are seriously limited? It is when we have a broad and deep knowledge that we are more likely to have the capacity for those “Ah ha!” moments that lead to inventiveness, creativity and discovery.
Our loss of deep reading and thinking has a financial cost, too.
“The loss of our ability to think is a big deal. Close to 40 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product comes from so-called knowledge and technology-intensive industries, from aerospace manufacturing to software development to financial and information services,” Newport writes.
“Brainstorming” sessions where people feed off one another’s insights, experience, and knowledge gained through study and experience will weaken to little squalls.
What’s the equivalent of a good workout for our brains? 
“A good candidate is reading,” Newport says. “Making sense of written text exercises our minds in important ways. We develop what the cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf calls ‘deep reading processes’ that rewire and retrain neuronal regions in ways that increase the complexity and nuance of what we’re able to understand. 
“Deep reading is our species’ bridge to insight and novel thought,” she writes. Reading a few pages of a book every day, or a story in your community newspaper, can be thought of as a brisk mental walk.
We don’t need to accept this steady decline in our reasoning and thinking capabilities, Newport says. “In a short time, we transformed the way we thought about health,” he says. Do something similar for our brains now, he recommends.
Australia passed legislation banning social media use for kids under 16. America should do the same, he says, just as it sets age limits for alcohol and tobacco.
Another way to exercise our brains is to reject the constant companion model of phone use, in which we keep smartphones with us at all times. Put them away – far away. In another room. Take off your smartwatch, if you have one, and put it with your phone.
“The problems I describe here are only going to get worse. To stave off disaster, we need a full revolution in defense of thinking, launched against the digital forces seeking to degrade it,” Newport writes.
Set the example at home. Set in our schools – ban smartphones during the school day. Set it when you are out with family or friends for a meal, for coffee, or just a couple cocktails. Disconnect. Be present.