Slate Magazine’s Emily Yoffe has an entertaining, breezy, and yet worried piece out right now on “Seeking” with the subhed: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous. It ties together research, some of it going back decades, into obsessive behavior that can be triggered in lab animals and even in people, with other work on the brain centers that appear to be involved, and with theories on why people and some animals will pursue repetitive rewards – such as nibbles of food or new information – to the point of neglecting other vital needs in their lives. It’s like a dog that will chase a ball to the point of collapse. Or, for another instance, engaging in conversation with companions rather than texting or googling or emailing or tweeting away while at the dinner table.
One finds the head nodding in agreement as familiar-sounding scenes and vignettes of digitophilia roll past. She has all sorts of examples to brighten up her point. It’s polished, enjoyable, diverting, and it may be true. The Tracker is pretty well convinced, however, that in the tradition of pop psychology writing established over decades too many anecdotes and general observations are being piled upon too narrow a platform of serious science to be supported as learned speculation without keeling over. And the danger? Mindless chasing. Doing things that are useless. Our intelligent stalking behavior is “short circuited.” Hmm. Some danger. One is unsure that this is enough to deter anybody with an urge to tweet.
Random over-literal grumble: Cartoons are just that, simple pictures. But in that hamster wheel up there, which is a clever illus, where are the spokes to that thing?
-CP
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