These shifts in preferences and aptitudes have come as a bit of a surprise. Developmental psychologists tend to assume that brain maturation follows a “natural” path leading toward the acquisition of higher cognitive abilities—sophisticated reasoning, expert reading, broad knowledge, social competence, and purposeful self-discipline and planning. They see the human brain as exceedingly robust1 or plastic in its capacity to adapt functionally to changing social and technological environments.2 Its remarkable resilience can presumably be disrupted only by traumatic experiences like child abuse or rare genetic vulnerabilities. Suboptimal parenting or a generally unhealthy social and technological milieu, on the other hand, are rarely regarded as sufficient reasons for worry.3 This line of thinking does not rest on much solid basis, other than the assumption that familiar skill sets and knowledge chests must be the result of a natural evolution. It may need to be radically rethought in light of the growing cognitive difficulties experienced by students at various levels.
With social modernization, humans have needed to adapt to a highly unnatural habitat: densely populated cities, overcrowded places of work and learning, tight daily schedules, an artificially induced sleep-wake cycle, an overall technological infrastructure which encourages sedentary lifestyles, a confusing array of lifestyle, temptations, and consumer choices, eroding social standards and hierarchies of authority, etc. Since the mid-20th century, children, adolescents and adults in richer countries have been exposed to a social and technological milieu which, with its growing complexity and stress levels, has become increasingly overwhelming. The sensory and social overstimulation provided by immersion in a screen-based virtual reality has added an additional layer to this overall picture.
The suspicion that modern societies and technological progress create a deeply unnatural and potentially unhealthy living environment is hardly new. It can be traced back at least to Rousseau and the Romantic poets and thinkers who followed in his footsteps. For a long time, their worries appeared premature and overblown. Up to a point, the human brain seemed capable of developing new abilities, adapting to the accelerating waves of technological and social change, and generating inventions and abstract models which helped accelerate further the whole process of intensifying and often disruptive social transformation. On the basis of this overall experience, it is tempting to still think that our brains and whole organisms are infinitely adaptable. This, alas, is a dubiously rosy assumption.
The biologically “modern” human brain developed over 100,000 years ago in the African savannah. Over a long prehistoric period, it was well adapted to the simple lifestyle of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Succeeding stages of social evolution produced the first sparks of recognizable symbolic “culture;” ushered in agriculture, cities, and writing; and made possible the growth of ancient chiefdoms, empires, and city-states.
In the course of those momentous shifts, it turned out that the human brain did have much excess capacity and plasticity.4 It could undergo massive reorganization, and many of its areas have been put to novel uses—a process which has helped humans, for example, learn to read and engage in abstract thinking and complex planning. Yet, there must be a limit beyond which the brain cannot successfully adapt, or adaptation would produce odd permutations analogous to the strange colors and protrusions of fish that have mutated to live in the depth of the ocean; to say nothing of the unhealthy neural adaptations associated with substance-dependence and behavioral compulsions. Alas, that limit may have already been reached.
Mastering our contemporary technological and social habitat and thriving in it strikes me as an almost impossible task. It requires a cognitive acumen and finely calibrated emotional control which can develop only under the most exceptional of circumstances.5 These abilities can flourish only through utmost individual and institutional efforts, and are inherently precarious.
In this sense, we do not resemble the highly intelligent dolphins who can learn effortlessly to cooperate and communicate (apparently, calling each other by name)6 in order to catch more fish or evade killer whales. Cognitively, we are more like the border collie who was able to learn the names of 1,002 different objects after years of training with her dedicated and infinitely patient owner, a retired college professor.7 Socially, we are more like circus animals who have learned to walk on their hind legs and mastered complex tricks. We can also compare ourselves to those chimps that, after years of living with humans, have learned to use some sign language, drink from a bottle, and go to the bathroom or wear nappies. Such skills and knowledge require powerful motivation, persistent effort, and rigorous training. They are unlikely to develop, and would be superfluous, under any set of “natural” conditions. Such “domestication,” even if necessary, may come at a price—as recognized by Sigmund Freud or Friedrich Nietzsche (who famously described man as “the sick animal”). It may also remain incomplete and can even be reversed8—a tendency Freud once thought was unfolding as World War I took its brutal course.
If an overall grasp of our social and cognitive predicament is insufficient to corroborate such premonitions, they can perhaps receive support from some experimental findings. Among these, the results from a series of rigorous studies conducted by German researchers over several decades are particularly striking. In the 1980s, they started to observe with surprise some dramatic changes in the neural responsiveness and behavior of children. German children were apparently becoming less sensitive to milder sensory stimuli, and would often register and pay attention only to “brutal thrills.” 9
The German researchers thought this decreased sensitivity was a result of the need of the brain to filter out much of the overstimulation it was receiving. They called it the “horn of plenty” effect. Children who exhibited this syndrome also easily tolerated dissonant information, without expressing the expected emotional discomfort and seeking to integrate the various bits and pieces into coherent patterns. A degree of sensory numbing thus seemed to go hand in hand with new deficiencies in conceptual processing and orientation.
The overall result of these changes in sensory, emotional, and cognitive processing was decreased appreciation for some fundamental features of the surrounding reality. That created a degree of detachment which Dutch trend philosopher Gert Gerken dubbed “the new indifference.”10 All those striking changes were apparently the result of incessant sensory overstimulation from a very early age. On the basis of those observations, the German researchers concluded that children born since the late 1960s had developed a “new brain” with distinct wiring patterns. The symptoms the German researchers observed, though weaker, looked similar to the dulled perception of “reality” induced by substance abuse or behavioral addictions. Ironically, that “new brain” is now the brain of the “digital immigrants” which seems to possess stronger integration and coherence than the brains of the upcoming “digital natives.”11
German children are unlikely to represent some sort of weird exception in this area. Indeed, experts and teachers in the United States have observed a similar increase in impulsivity and generalized learning difficulties in children. In the words of Martha Herbert, she and her colleagues have started to see more children “with diffuse difficulties—not discrete learning disabilities where everything else is more or less intact, but difficulties spread across multiple cognitive, sensorimotor, social, and emotional domains.”12 Herbert made these observations back in 2000, citing statistics indicating that 17 percent of American children had “some kind of attentional or learning problem.”13 As I noted earlier, she thought such difficulties reflected changes in brain wiring induced by an overwhelming social and physical environment.
The difficulties of learners who experience similar symptoms and cognitive problems are, indeed, likely to be generalized and pervasive. If this is the case, the examples I gave earlier of inadequate knowledge of social and political issues and of history cannot be accidental. So it should come as no surprise that the majority of college students who have taken a basic physics course can still think, for example, that heavier objects should fall faster.14
Lingua Franca?
I noted earlier that I was particularly puzzled by the failure of most of my students to develop a sufficiently strong sense of the English language. Problems with grammar and syntax could perhaps be attributed to insufficient practice and feedback from professors. Inadequate pronunciation, though, is a lot more difficult to explain in this way. In addition to attending classes, reading, and writing, my students now spend a lot of time watching English-language movies and other programs. Yet, even some of the brightest among them now find it difficult to master basic (even if a bit crude) English pronunciation, and particularly to suppress the different pronunciation of Latin-derived words in their native language. At recent defenses of senior theses in our department, two Bulgarian students repeatedly mispronounced some very common words like “ultimate” and “public” (the “u” in related words in Bulgarian are pronounced as in “book”), “migrants” and “migration” (the “i” being pronounced as in “mill”), and a few other words. These were excellent students who should have heard each of the words they mispronounced multiple times, yet these had failed to sink in. I have heard students mispronounce even everyday words like “download” and “campus” which should have become etched a lot deeper into their brains.
I wish there were a more innocuous explanation for such linguistic glitches. I am afraid they do reflect, like learning problems in general, disruptions in brain plasticity and implicit learning. As increasing numbers of young people around the globe try to master English, such problems will likely contribute to the consolidation of a cruder form of global lingua franca (or “Globish”15). This, in itself, is likely to have an adverse effect on the way experts in different areas process textual information. There is some research indicating that reading a text in a foreign language evokes a blander empathetic resonance, a tendency which results in cruder utilitarian thinking.16 If this is the case, then the “weird” Western mindset described by a now famous trio of psychologists17 may eventually become universalized, at least among highly educated professionals and scholars.
These problems do predate the internet. As I already noted, Jane Healy catalogued related cognitive dysfunctions in the late 1980s on the basis of many interviews with teachers, as well as direct observations and studies. She directed particularly harsh words at “Sesame Street,” the popular children’s program which had failed in its ostensible mission to help generations of American children become better readers.19 “Private Universe,” the short documentary which exposed the shocking scientific illiteracy of students graduating with flying colors from Harvard, appeared in 1988.18 A few years earlier, the President’s report, A Nation at Risk, had already described the state of American public education as disastrous. And Rudolf Flesch’s controversial book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, had already identified a severe reading problem among American schoolchildren back in the mid-1950s.20
Flesch’s book pointed very early to the deleterious effect of television, a concern which later became fairly widespread. His immediate intention, however, was to promote the use of phonics as the most efficient methodology to teach reading. Most subsequent hand-wringing over problems in education has similarly focused on perceived problems in the functioning and pedagogical underpinnings of the American school system and college education. This narrow preoccupation is best illustrated by the dramatic diagnosis offered by the authors of the “Nation at Risk” report. In a sentence that went viral long before the term was invented, they concluded that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”21
What goes on in and outside the classroom is undoubtedly important. Still, I tend to think that a narrow focus on dubious pedagogical standards and practices, or on the time students waste exposed to screen-based media, can obscure deeper problems. I have come to believe that these problems reflect a more general crisis in learning which has only become more intractable with the IT revolution that truly took off in the 1990s. In this sense, the “crisis in education” Arendt once lamented may be broader and deeper than even she realized.
At the neurophysiological level, these broad capacities seem to depend on dopamine-mediated signaling. Some research findings suggest that declarative memory, implicit learning, sustained attention, and decision making are affected by levels of and sensitivity to dopamine in different parts of the brain. These need to be moderate and finely modulated, with fitting spurts and dips, and finely tuned responses to these.22 Chronically elevated levels of and dulled sensitivity to dopamine, reflecting chronic overstimulation, are particularly counterproductive. These can lead to boredom and apathy, distractibility, and impaired learning. From this point of view, the crisis in student learning is primarily a crisis of warped brain plasticity.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Understimulated
In a recent study, college students were placed in an empty room without any digital gadgets or other distractions, other than a device allowing them to self-administer mild electric shocks. They were to spend between 6 and 15 minutes alone with their thoughts. The majority did not really relish the experience. Sixty-seven percent of the male students and 25 percent of the young women chose to give themselves one or more electric jolts rather than complete the “thinking period” undisturbed. Before the experiment, most had indicated that they would rather pay five dollars than suffer such an electric shock.23 No wonder that the study of “boredom” has become a hot academic topic.24
Our children’s brains and our own do change in order to adapt to the increased abundance of various temptations and the ubiquity of screen-based virtual interaction in our lives. I suspect, though, that this kind of adaptation is detrimental to the ability and desire of students at various ages to succeed in formal schooling; and—more generally—to develop their thinking (and underlying neural networks) through reading both in and out of school. As Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson has concluded in exasperation, the “meager results” from waves of educational reforms in the United States cannot be attributed mostly to commonly cited factors like inadequate facilities and resources, or the insufficient number, qualifications, or remuneration of teachers. In fact, there have been marked improvements in all these areas, with no noticeable results. Samuelson has therefore pointed to a “larger cause of failure [that] is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation.”25
This troubling diagnosis in fact implies something that can hardly be stated—that American students (like those in many other countries) may have become less impressionable and by extension, “teachable.” If this is the case, then the educational “attainment” demonstrated by students in a country like Finland may not result primarily from better pedagogical practices or teacher selection, training, motivation and the like. Finnish students might, for complex reasons, be more open to the kind of learning schools aim to foster, or generally more “educatable.”26 Unfortunately, the number of countries where the majority of students appear to benefit from such an overall learning aptitude is relatively small. In fact, there are now growing concerns about a global crisis in student learning which can no longer be attributed primarily to lack of access to education or of resourses.27
From such a perspective, trends in student learning would not appear as a direct function of pedagogical practices. Such shifts would be more strongly affected by the broader socio-technological environment in which students grow up and develop. In some East Asian and European countries which have done well in the PISA studies (Shanghai and Hong Kong in China, South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Estonia, and Poland) most children start formal education later—usually the year they turn 7. This is obviously not a sufficient condition for superior educational achievement, but may help. According to David Whitebread, a Cambridge University expert in cognitive development, the preponderance of empirical evidence shows “that children who have a longer period of play-based early childhood education, that goes on to age six or seven, finish up with a whole range of clear advantages.”28
Whether excessive exposure to TV, the internet, or other visual distractions and social trivia can be classified as a full-blown “addiction” in the clinical sense is beside the point. What really matters is whether such massive daily exposure has a profound impact on brain wiring and neural processing. On the basis of the latest neuroscientific research, it seems there can be little doubt about this. And even a loose parallel with recognized chemical or behavioral addictions would suggest that the main effects of such a virtual immersion would include overall affective desensitization to weaker stimuli, and increased impulsivity.
Again, this is probably a vicious cycle in which greater exposure to virtual experiences begets decreased pleasure from and concentration for sustained reading—so only increased and more relentless virtual immersion can provide the level of stimulation which no reading material (or even “real” leisure activities) can offer any longer. These dynamics would be played out most forcefully in the brains and bodies of children and adolescents since these have, for better or worse, the strongest plasticity. As Carr has warned, however, even mature brains are far from safe29—and the digital onslaught or indulgence we all face is part of a much larger existential overload.