What the Internet Does to Your Brain
[Music]
remember when our parents used to tell
us that video games would rot our brains
well turns out they were wrong about
that video games won't rot your brain
and in some cases it can actually be
beneficial to play them however if your
particular set of parental units happen
to use the term warp your brain well
then they might have been on the right
track in the last few decades brain
scientists have learned a lot about
something called neuroplasticity
essentially the brain changes its
physical configuration in response to
the tasks you give it and the stimuli
you expose it to this can include
something as simple as using a clock to
something as complex as playing a video
game and it can also include using the
internet over the past few years I've
had this sneaking suspicion that my
daily internet use was having subtle
effects on the way that I think I used
to be able to sit and immerse myself in
a book for hours but now that task is a
lot harder often daydreamer get caught
being distracted and I seem to remember
being bored a lot when I was a kid but
now boredom almost never creeps into my
life there's always something grabbing
for my attention and it turns out that
this suspicion wasn't misplaced like the
clock in the videogame and countless
other technologies the internet quietly
changes the structure of our brains as
we use it and not always in ways that
are positive the brains process of
rewiring itself works a bit like taping
over a VHS tape as the psychiatrist
Norman Doidge puts it if we stop
exercising our mental skills we do not
just forget them the brain nap space for
those skills such as deep book reading
is turned over to the skills we practice
instead such as browsing endless pages
of the bank estimates so today let's
explore just how the internet affects
our brains and how we can prevent or at
least reverse its most harmful changes
in the late 1800s the philosopher
friedrich nietzsche's eyesight began to
fail him and this brought with it a
terrible consequence it made it almost
impossible for him to write the act of
focusing his eyes on a page gave him
terrible headaches and he worried that
he would have to give up a practice all
together but something saved him and
that something was called the mulling
hansen writing ball now as weird as this
thing looks it was actually the fastest
typewriter ever built back when it was
released and it also saved Nietzsche's
writing career once he learned a touch
type with it he could write once more
albeit now with his eyes closed the
writing ball didn't just rescue
Nietzsche's ability to write though it
also changed the character of his output
one of his close friend at the time
noted that Nietzsche's writing took on a
new forcefulness that it became tighter
and nietzsche himself agreed writing you
are right our writing equipment takes
part in the forming of our thoughts and
it's not just our writing equipment that
does this in the book the shallows what
the internet is doing to our brains
which was actually the primary source
for this video the author Nicholas Carr
demonstrates how nearly all the
technology we use can cause real
physical changes within our brains for
example one experiment that was done on
violin players showed that the area of
their sensory cortex is that controlled
their fingering hands was actually much
larger than that of control group who
had never played a musical instrument
before but it's not just the physical
use of tools that can cause these
changes even purely mental activity and
Tony can you like make a hammer float
here in the air with you know your
editing skills alright let's try it
again even purely mental activity shaped
by technology can do the same thing
another experiment done on London cab
drivers found that compared to control
group the area of the drivers brains
called the posterior hippocampus was
much larger than normal and as you might
expect this is an area of the brain that
plays a huge part in helping us
understand our physical surroundings now
if you wouldn't be wrong to point out
that it's no big surprise a cab drivers
brain would adapt to the task of
navigating a complex web of city streets
when that's what they spend all day long
doing but other technologies have far
subtler and further reaching effects
before the invention of the clock people
perceive time in a very different way
than we do today to them time flowed
like a stream of water and the
transition from one moment to the next
was seamless and imperceptible once we
started tracking time though
that all changed when we ended the first
time keeping devices we changed our
conception of time itself instead of
being an unbroken stream time became a
series of discrete individual units and
as clocks became more and more accurate
those units got smaller and more precise
suddenly we were thinking in terms of
hours and then minutes and eventually
seconds and we also became fixated on
productivity how much time did we spend
how much time have we wasted but there
was a larger effect as well once we
started looking at time as a construct
made up of small parts that thinking got
extended to everything else as car
rights once the clock had redefined time
as a series of units of equal duration
our minds began to stress the methodical
mental work of division and measurement
we began to see in all things and
phenomena the pieces that composed the
whole the clocks methodical ticking
helped bring into being the scientific
mind and the scientific man and if the
clock made a big change the way that we
think then writing made and even a
bigger one now this technology took
thousands of years to progress through
the necessary stages the shift from
local graphic characters to phonetic
alphabets the addition of spacing
between words and the invention of the
Gutenberg press just to name a few but
eventually this technology caused huge
shifts in our behavior once the general
population became literate they started
to read what's your rating for and not
just that they started to read silently
for long periods of time and this is a
bigger deal than you might think car
rights to read a book was to practice an
unnatural process of thought one that
demanded sustained unbroken attention to
a single static object and for people to
do this they had to forge neural
pathways that would allow them to apply
top-down control over their attention
top-down control is something that has
to be learned and practiced naturally
we're wired for bottom-up attention our
senses are finely tuned to pick up
changes in our environment and our
attention naturally drifts to them it's
constantly shifting now this is great
for noticing a lurking tiger or a
potential source of food but it's not so
great for deep analytical reading it
just doesn't allow for that type of
prolonged intense concentration that's
necessary for parsing complex ideas and
through the act of reading we developed
a new
of attentional control one that was far
better suited to that task but now it
seems like we're starting to lose that
ability so let's revisit that experiment
with London cab drivers again for a
second because there's something that I
didn't mention in addition to the
enlargement of the posterior hippocampus
the researchers also found a change in
the anterior hippocampus it shrank and
in further tests they found that that
shrinking may have actually harmed the
cab drivers ability to perform on other
memorization tasks Norman do I just
words come back to mind here when we
stop using a certain skill the neural
pathways that used to support it get
reconfigured to enhance the skills that
we do use as the psychiatrist Jeffery
Schwartz puts it it's survival of the
busiest and I'm sure you can see where
this is going
unless of course you've already gotten
distracted and clicked away from this
video which just makes you an example of
my next point the technology that we now
spend most of our time using the
internet definitely doesn't do anything
to encourage the use of the neural
pathways that are devoted to top-down
attentional control and long-term
concentration on a single source as car
puts it our use of the Internet involves
many paradoxes but the one that promises
to have the greatest long-term influence
over how we think is this one the net
seizes our attention only to scatter it
in other words the Internet promotes
distracted nough sand multitasking at
almost all times we are surrounded by
multiple internet connected devices and
even on a single computer you can be
watching a video have 18 different tabs
open at the same time be playing Spotify
in the background and beginning messages
on iMessage and slack at the same time
oh and also playing over watching the
other monitor can't forget about that
one moreover the internet rewards this
type of distracted behavior it's not
just our frequent use of this technology
that gives it such a powerful ability to
shape our neural pathways it's also the
fact that offers constant quick dopamine
hits it constantly stimulates the reward
loop inside our heads the result is that
the internet promotes the return to our
natural bottom-up state of attentional
control there's always something new
happening somewhere else to shift your
focus and just like with those London
cab drivers the brain has to give
something up the more time you allow the
internet to promote this distracted
frenzy style of consuming information
the less time you spend deeply
concentrated unseen
tasks and as a result less able you are
to call up that deep concentration when
you really need it so what can we do
about this
are we just stuck in a downward spiral
doomed to end up like the people in
idiocracy
or can we reverse this trend we been
botties man why wouldn't you at the
match your elf was saving you a seat to
being Don oils oh there's more the video
I thought we were done okay I guess
we're at the part of the video where I
give you ten ideas for reclaiming your
attention yeah I did write that part in
the script okay before we get into this
remember it is survival of the busiest
the key isn't to just stop using the
Internet which as it turns out a pretty
useful invention instead it's to reduce
the activities that cause the
undesirable changes and to replace them
with activities that promote the
neurological changes that you actually
want to see and this could mean that you
don't even have to reduce the amount of
time you spend on the Internet at all
after all there's plenty of long-form
content on the internet there's long
articles there's long video essays like
this one and plenty of other deep
content Plus with apps like Kindle Cloud
Reader and projects like the Gutenberg
press you can literally read millions of
books from any internet-connected device
but there is a caveat here remember the
brain seeks out rewards and that the
internet tends to dole out the ones that
promote distracted thinking if you're
reading a print book with your phone in
the other room it's pretty easy to
resist the temptation to send a tweet or
check your email but it's a very
different story if you're reading the
exact same book on an Internet connected
iPad so we need to do two different
things number one promote the healthy
activities that build that top-down
attentional control and number two make
some environmental changes that make it
easier to shake our bad internet habits
so here are some ideas for mission
number one to start first just read more
books and yeah there's gonna be people
out there who make the argument that
books are full of filler they're waste
of time and you could get the same
salient points by going over to Google
and finding a well-written summary but
that argument isn't relevant right now
because in this case the goal of reading
a book is to promote deep long-term
concentration on one singular task
second spend time working with
out the internet and yes I know you feel
like you need the internet but honestly
a lot of my best research has come from
finding books in the library and if I'm
being even more honest with myself a lot
of my work especially writing once I
have all my research material and video
editing doesn't require the internet at
all now my brain tells me that it does
but this is actually a sign that I've
become dependent on the internet and if
anything I should take it as a sign that
I need to let that neural pattern fade
of it 3 have more in depth in person
conversations go out to dinner with your
friends more often and when you do do
not put your phone on the table keep it
in your pocket or don't bring it at all
or watch more movies and this has the
exact same goal as reading books you're
paying attention to one piece of cinema
for about two hours and again don't
bring your phone into the experience you
don't need to live tweet Lord of the
Rings finally number 5 commit to longer
periods of time doing one thing go
outside and ride your bike for a full
hour or practice an instrument for 30
full minutes now if you're like a lot of
people you probably feel too guilty to
let yourself do these things because you
feel like you have a lot of work to do
and if you're in that boat I've got a
suggestion for you install a program on
your computer called rescue time this
will track the time that you spend on
different apps and websites and I bet
after a few days of data gathering
you're gonna see that all your little
trips to Twitter and Instagram and all
your other little distracting websites
actually add up to more time throughout
the day then that hour you would have
spent on the bike and that just leaves
us with mission number 2 those
environmental changes and the first one
is going to deal with naturally YouTube
since we are on YouTube right now when
you're watching videos on YouTube watch
them in full screen now for almost my
entire youtube viewing life I never did
this and it doesn't really make sense on
the surface right because if you put a
video on full screen it looks better it
takes up the entire monitor but the
reason becomes pretty clear once you
understand neuroplasticity and our
reward seeking behavior and the way that
YouTube is designed though I'm Austan so
I'll be watching the video i clicked on
part of my brain is also itching to
click on something else that i see over
in the sidebar and going into full
screen well that would take away my very
interesting links now you can go even
further with this and i'm not going to
talk too much about it but in the
description down below i have linked to
a little snippet of CSS that you can use
to actually blur out all the videos in
the YouTube homepage and the site
so if you don't want to use fullscreen
you could try that trick as well but to
move on to item number two here read
articles in reader mode the fact of the
matter is that most websites today are
designed with lots of distracting UI
elements like pop-ups and sidebars and
all kinds of other stuff that is
designed to keep you clicking from page
to page but you can get rid of all these
elements by using reader mode now Safari
on iOS and Chrome for Android both have
built-in reader modes which just isolate
all the content and let you see just
what you came to read and on the desktop
front Firefox Microsoft edge and Safari
I've had them built in for years and as
of this week chrome has one as well
you're gonna want to make sure you're
updated to the latest version chrome 75
at least you're also gonna have to go
into the experimental Flags section to
turn it on once you have done that it is
time to move on to item number three
which is to limit the time that you
spend on distraction heavy parts of the
Internet to a certain window during the
day so instead of making frequent trips
to Twitter or Instagram or deviantART or
whatever you like to go to during the
day restrict it and compress it into
maybe just a one hour period and this is
actually pretty easy to accomplish now
you could just unplug your Ethernet
cable or disable your Wi-Fi while you're
not using those sites but you could also
get a little more subtle a little more
control over the process by using a web
site blocking app like freedom or
culture and additionally item number
four here there are other tools you can
use to make social media sites less
distracting for example I've been using
a plug-in called News Feed Eradicator to
destroy my news feed on Facebook for a
long time and for tweeting there are
free tweet scheduling apps like buffer
which will allow you to tweet to your
heart's content without actually opening
twitter app and getting sucked into the
feed there finally number five hide the
visual clutter on your desktop if you're
anything like me you probably have a
bookmarks bar extension icons and an OS
taskbar that are just cluttering up your
screen and all these things can be
hidden if you need them they're probably
keyboard shortcuts to bring them back or
you can hover somewhere but for the most
part you don't need them and it would be
a lot better to have a distraction free
view of the content that you're trying
to read now these are tactical changes
and they're not gonna wing your brain
off it's internet addicted habits on
their own but they will go a long way to
helping you do that a lot more easily
still remember the process of changing
your brains most frequently accessed
pathways is a slow one that's gonna
require a lot of discipline and first so
once you tell these things up focus more
on those positive habits we discussed
earlier reading more books having more
in-depth conversations and soon in time
that ability to focus deeply will come
back but while we can change the degree
to which the internet affects our brains
one thing that we can't change so easily
is just how much our lives are run
through it now we do our banking online
we pay rent online we store our files up
in the cloud and that means if you're
anything like me you have dozens if not
hundreds of online accounts to manage
and to keep secure that's why I
recommend using dashlane instead of
using the same password for every
account which is a terrible idea
you can use dashlane to generate a
strong and unique password for every
online account you have all them are
stored in a secure vault that uses very
strong encryption meaning that you are
the only person who ever has access to
it and it'll even let you know if any of
your passwords are weak or if they've
been compromised in a data breach or if
you're using them across multiple
accounts and when any of those things
happens you can easily change that
password to a much stronger one with
just the click of a button you don't
have to log into the website to do it
which is a pretty sweet feature plus -
lien can instantly log you into websites
and autofill long forms which makes
browsing a heck of a lot faster and with
a built-in VPN that keeps your browsing
private dark web monitoring for all of
your personal information and apps for
all of your devices - Lane is seriously
the one tool that you need to keep your
online life secure and as a result since
you're not using multiple tools it saves
you money too - Lane has a basic free
version that you get started with
there's also a premium version that gets
you access to all the features I just
mentioned and if you're one of the first
200 people to use link in the
description down below to sign up you're
gonna get a free 30-day trial of that
premium subscription and help to support
my channel as well huge thanks as always
goes out to dashlane for sponsoring this
video and being a big supporter of my
channel and thank you for watching as
well hopefully you found something
useful in this video that you can use to
start building healthier habits making
those positive neurological changes and
if you did enjoy it consider hitting
that like button to support the channel
and also subscribing right there to get
new videos when they come out you can
also click right around here to get a
free copy of my book on how to earn
better grades or click wherever I'm
doing jazz hands to watch some more
videos here on this channel though
if you want to make those positive
neurological changes then maybe you
should go read the book
