File photo used for representation only
In today’s world, individuals are surrounded by approximately two million bits of information per second at any given time, but human nervous systems can only process about 134 bits per second.
Looking at this simple equation, how can someone balance the volume and velocity of information they are exposed to daily, and how much a brain can actually process?
“The answer is, we are not balancing it well,” said Sobia Rahman, (pictured) a psychologist at Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar (WCM-Q), a Qatar Foundation(QF) partner university.
“So, if our cognitive capacity is exhausted by paying attention to everything coming to us all the time, we will have difficulty in being creative. And we may even struggle with our daily life tasks,” she said.
The human brain’s attention span is becoming shorter through the years, dropping from 12 seconds to 8 seconds from 2000 to 2015, according to a Microsoft research study. And there are many causes behind it, with technology and the Internet occupying top spots on the list.
“As modern-day individuals, we are hyperconnected in a super complex and pressured environment,” said Rahman.
“We are greeted each day with a high volume and velocity of data, and have so much information at our fingertips that it gets hard to differentiate the important from the trivial.
“Now, let’s add a pandemic into the mix. It has manufactured a situation where our minds and bodies are constantly running in overdrive. We are perpetually living in a state of high stress, anxiety, and fatigue which rightfully takes a toll on both our physical health and mental health,” she added.
According to Rahman, for the emotional drain caused by social media, humans need social connectedness, and their brains release dopamine when such connectedness is achieved.
She said that social media uses this principle to keep us hooked on that dopamine high.
“We keep chasing that dopamine high at the expense of our mental health and well-being. Then when we log off, our brains must get reacquainted with the “normal” level of dopamine you receive without social media. This oftentimes feels like withdrawal, similar to withdrawal from narcotic substances. And we have seen how this can become very addictive and hard to manage.”
While distraction could represent a complex and even chronic challenge for some, Rahman suggests some strategies that can help get human brains back on track and improve mental health, such as engaging in a meditative practice daily to help regulate our emotions; paying conscious attention to what is important and learning to let go of the additional noise; setting goals and values to live by every day; and engaging in a digital detox.
Herbert Simon, a renowned economist, psychologist, and Nobel Prize winner whose work influenced the fields of computer science and cognitive psychology, once said, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Yet, according to Rahman, every cloud has a silver lining, as some counter studies argue that the human brain’s plasticity surpasses imagination and can adapt to change in extraordinary ways. Hence, continuous observation and research exploring how technology impacts our brains is the only way to find the answer.
