Screen addiction Flashcards
A growing mountain of evidence showing that there are significant negative clinical and neurological effects on young children from too much screen time.
Brain imaging research is showing that glowing screens are a stimulating to the brains pleasure center and increases levels of dopamine, the primary feel good neurotransmitter, as much as sex or drugs. This is what makes screens so addictive but even more damaging for kids with still developing brains that are not equipped to handle this level of stimulation.
Ever increasing amount of clinical research correlating screen tech with psychiatric disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression and even psychosis.
Brain imaging studies are conclusively showing that excessive screen exposure can neurological damage or young person is developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can.
That’s right the kids brain on tech looks like a brain on drugs.
Addiction to video games – – can’t eat can’t sleep or go to the bathroom,.
Parents think they are keeping the kids safe by keeping them indoors in front of video games versus being outdoors.
Today 97 percent of all American children between the ages of two and 17 play video games. That’s 64 million kids.
Shooter games, candy crush, Minecraft, World of Warcraft create an adrenaline rush that is highly addictive.
Video games for the alienated kid and social media for the cheerleader are both just as addicting as her one is too junky. With every burst of virtual gunfire, every text and tweak, there is a release – – a little squirt of dopamine just as surely as cocaine tickles dopamine neurotransmitters. And some kids are predisposed towards addictive personalities and this might be more vulnerable to getting hooked on these various digital dopamine stimulants.
The ever increasing and never ending limitless possibilities of these games create a very hypnotic grip on kids. That have now to pull along with the stimulating hyper arousing content creates a – dopamine increasing affect becomes the key ingredient in a primordial addiction forming dynamic.
Neuroscience doctors at UCLA call computer games electronic cocaine. “Our brains are wired for finding immediate reward. With technology, novelty is the reward. You essentially become addicted to novelty”
As an adult, you have a fully developed brain and nervous system; your frontal cortex which controls your executive functioning including impulsivity is fully formed. Your adrenal and nervous system’s fully developed. And your attentional abilities have been hard wired since your childhood.
Imagine if hyper arousing screen stimulation was a condition under which you spent the bulk of your time like seven hours a day that kids do currently.
We’ve seen an 800 percent increase and ADHD in the past 20 years.
We are starting to see the clinical byproducts of our modern digital age – – increased ADHD, tech addiction, mood and behavioral disorders, psychoses all as a result of our new and wondrous Street screen technologies.
In the early 1900s, 90 percent of the population in North America lived in rural areas.
Now more than 90 percent of our society lives in urban areas flooded by the white noise and sensory overload of the information age.
Steve Jobs was a low-tech parent. Every evening, he made a point of having dinner at the big long table in the kitchen discussing books, history etc. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.
Many tech executives and engineers in Silicon Valley put their kids in no tech Waldorf schools where the majority of parents work at Google, Apple or YAHOO. These parents insist on no tech classroom precisely because they understand tech and it’s dangers better than most.
We are seeing a phenomenon of failure to launch. In 2011, almost a fifth of men between 25 and 34 still live with their parents, playing video games with the average player being 30 years old.
Boys, in particular, are particularly susceptible to this phenomenon. The games do not engender a sense of resilience or patience and drive that the real world requires.
In video games there is an expectation of instant gratification that makes school work and other chores seem too much. The brain is a developing organ and we are feeding our boys with brain junk food.
30-year-old adolescence, 10-year-olds who have seen it all on youtube. We have become a society of sexualized kids but also 30-year-old Iteenagers.
Socrates did not think much of books in the written word as much as oral history. He thought the written word would kill our memory skills and make us weaker of the mind relieving it have work that makes it stronger.
Distractibility and poor impulse control or the hallmarks of addiction.
Brain imaging studies now show pre-gaming brains versus post video gaming brains and the Neurobiological changes in the brain have resulted in video game playing. The brain changes mirror those of drug addiction.
Memory is a skill that one can increase by practice. Engaging in memory practice can actually strengthen our brains and increase or gray matter, according to modern brain imaging research.
Doing the training for the knowledge – – the taxi driver test for British cab drivers, shows those you pass the test increased the volume of gray matter in the hippocampus compared to when they started. The hippocampus is essential in memory acquisition. And Alzheimer’s, the hippocampus is one of the first brain regions to suffer damage.
The group that study rigorously for the knowledge change their neurophysiology in a beneficial way. The research shows that it is never too late to change your brain. The human brain remains plastic even in adult life, allowing you to adapt when we learn new tasks.
