Breaking in the habit, a friar on the internetNicholas Carr, in his 2010 book entitled "Superficial, what is the internet doing to our minds?" analyzes how the advent of the internet has affected our way of thinking. One of the conclusions reached by this author is that, as the suggestive title of the book indicates, the internet has made us more superficial.
In his reflection Nicholas Carr laments that he has lost his ability to concentrate. His mind used to be like a pickaxe that focused all its energy on the tip so that it could make its way through the earth. Now it has become a steel ball that, when it hits the earth, disperses all the energy into a myriad of points and is incapable of opening a trench. It can only dent the ground.
Internet and attention span
And the fact is that, no matter how much we are told and even positively valued, people are not multitaskers. We cannot attend to several fronts at the same time. We can only concentrate our capacity on one. The rest of the actions we perform at that moment, we will do automatically. In reality, when we say that we do several operations at the same time -what we define as multitasking- all we are doing is directing our attention from one task to another alternately, wasting a lot of energy in each change. With the aggravating circumstance that, as described by numerous authors, this way of using our mind makes it more fragile and dispersed.
That is why the emergence of the internet affected our attention span. Analyzing his own experience Nicholas Carr commented that life on the internet changed the way his brain searched for information, even when he was "offline", when he was not on the internet and trying, for example, to simply read a book. He found that his ability to concentrate and reflect was reduced because he now craved a constant stream of stimuli.
In fact, we have all experienced how reading texts on the web constantly leads us to attend to linked news calls for attention. We jump from one news item to another, without finishing them. We get scattered. That's why we often start reading an article, but end up surfing the net for a long time before we finish reading what was our first intention.
Nicolas Carr sums it up in one meaningful sentence: "In the past I was a diver in a sea of words. Now I glide across the surface like a guy on a jet ski". I'm sure many of us see ourselves reflected in this statement.
The advent of the smartphone
This situation has only multiplied since the year this book was published. The year 2010 is the year of the arrival of the smartphone in our pockets on a massive scale. From that moment on, with the latest generation of cell phones, we had the Internet constantly at our fingertips. From our pocket to our bedside table. Since then we can be surfing that sixth continent, as I called it. Benedict XVIThe use of the Internet is much easier than before, when we needed a computer to be able to connect to the network.
The arrival of the smartphone in our lives has been a revolutionary change. It is truly changing our minds, and it is having consequences that we can barely glimpse. Perhaps the most dramatic is the impact it is having on the mental health of our young people.
Jonathan Haidt, author of the book "The Anxious Generation"., analyzes the impact that this device has had on young people. Studying the statistics, he verifies the exponential increase in suicides and mental health problems among young people in recent years. He points out precisely the year 2010, the year in which the cell phone with internet was massively incorporated, as the moment in which this statistic skyrocketed.
The Internet-enabled cell phone has had major consequences for all of us. It has shaped our minds and our lives. Starting with the simplest fact. The immense amount of hours spent, which has taken away time for social interaction. But it has also taken away sleep time for all of us, especially the youngest. The accessibility of the smartphone, present on the bedside table when we go to bed, the series of platforms, which we consume compulsively, in short chapters, one after another, seriously alter sleep. This decrease in sleep is one of the factors that has contributed most to the tsunami of mental illness in adolescents.
We must not forget that social networks, and the Internet in general, are designed to be addictive. They have a perfectly studied behavioral process to hook us and keep us as long as possible. Teams of psychologists, marketing experts, money galore are on the other side of the screen looking for how to generate that addiction and make us need to be constantly connected. And for one simple reason. Nothing is free on the Internet. We ourselves, our time, our information is the payment that sustains the business.
Along with the numerous possibilities that this network of networks offers us, the need to learn how to manage its use is becoming more and more evident, if we do not want to be shipwrecked while navigating its tempestuous virtual waters. It is necessary to adopt some rules of coexistence among all of us. We need to cultivate an asceticism in its use, which will make us truly free and masters of the situation, and not the other way around. We must, in short, adopt a lifestyle in which we cultivate all our capacities and that makes us grow as human beings.
This is one of the greatest social challenges we face in our time. I think it is worth paying attention to it. And it will not be easy because there is a big business mounted around the internet, social networks, platforms and mobiles, which will move its springs to stop any initiative that they believe goes against their business. That has been the case of the recent cancellation by META (Facebook) of the accounts of the prestigious pedagogue Catherine l'Ecuyer, just for daring to propose an educational proposal that rationalizes the use of technology.
To paraphrase, it is true that technology is made for man and not man for technology. It is time to wake up from the dream and become aware of what is at stake.
Teaching Delegate in the Diocese of Getafe since the 2010-2011 academic year, he has previously exercised this service in the Archbishopric of Pamplona and Tudela, for seven years (2003-2009). He currently combines this work with his dedication to youth ministry directing the Public Association of the Faithful 'Milicia de Santa Maria' and the educational association 'VEN Y VERÁS. EDUCATION', of which he is President.
