Multitasking, the simultaneous use of different media, has increased on average from 16 to 40%. In short, we are increasingly accustomed to using many devices at the same time and being involved in this digital immersion. Can we say that the way in which children learn is also changing?
To answer this question, I would like to first of all stress the term “digital immersion”. As is well known with digital technology, we enter the so-called world of cyberspace and the infosphere. When we enter the Internet, this immense universe of networks, websites and thousands of virtual roads, we are faced with a universe without limits, as if we had lost all sense of territoriality.
What is the infosphere? It is a universe made up of the totality of objects and information in their various types that interact dynamically with each other. In this environment, like in real aquarium, it is as if we were completely immersed.
While previously I knew my country, my city and my neighbours, now I travel the world through my mobile phone connected to the internet. In the digital world, we are involved cognitively and emotionally in this vast universe of images and sounds that allow interactivity, participation and involvement with people and objects. Take online shopping for example. Entering an online shop is a test of immersion. It is a practical form of lived sensory experience, where everything is achieved through a simple click, to confirm.
When I connect with my phone, there is a human interaction with the machine that allows us to enter the virtual, which we could call virtual human mediation. This involves the use of our senses, perceptions, imagination and our emotions. Through mediation (me and the machine), we have access to a real universe that is coded (digitised) and experienced at a distance. Immersion in this digital setting has a direct impact on our lives and our social and cultural relationships.
Therefore, do we have to say that the internet is changing our brain and our pace of life?
Since the Internet allows speed, instantaneity and interactivity, our brain obviously enters a new dynamic and begins to respond to this brain acceleration, to a greater activation of the nervous system and consequently to the involvement of the five senses. In this way we enter what we can call the collective brain (cyberspace), which is a form of processing signs (symbols, languages, sounds) and stimuli.
This is all unconscious. In reality, we are inside a universe with a numerical and mathematical logic; a virtual space, a real psychosphere. In simple words, the psychosphere is the affective and cognitive state we experience when our mind is altered; non-material elements of information that affect our thoughts and feelings without us being aware of their reality.
Still on multitasking. Can we say that continuous multitasking reduces the quality of work, modifies learning, creates superficial individuals?
We need to focus on another important thing at this point. In the digital world we learn to live with a new logic in which reflecting, thinking, meditating as we used to do is now, on the contrary, almost automatic. Why this? Because digital logic relies a lot on stimuli, neurological reactions, and how our brain responds to this logic.
In this regard, we can say that all the images, sounds, words and interactivity that we experience in a social network have effects on our brain, directly impacting our perceptions, our imagination, our behaviours and consequently our choices both consciously and unconsciously.
So, is it a question of understanding how digital logic works?
Sure. In my opinion, understanding this digital logic is important to understand what happens with our behaviour in the digital habitat. The acceleration of the brain, the intensity of emotions, the exposure of our emotional life within social networks place us in a universe where this new mental mechanism requires many stimuli, many reactions and speeds. We are by no means saying that the world and digital logic are bad habits. We are part of the digital world and we are aware of the benefits this offers to humanity and human development. It is important to understand how human interaction with the digital setting works, and that is precisely why education in ethics that helps us live in a healthy and creative way is important.
So starting from digital logic, what is multitasking? In multitasking, the brain is trained to do many things cognitively and emotionally at the same time. The brain has to respond to automation, to stimuli quickly. So you live, you learn, and you do different things based on how your brain behaves. Some studies indicate that excessive automation causes people to lose the ability to create, think and reflect deeply. From digital logic comes a new intelligence such as the well-known artificial intelligence.
At this point it is worth remembering that digital logic, which is based on technique and automatism, follows the stimuli that neuroscience has developed, giving very little importance to the question of consciousness. This logic therefore changes the way of learning, generating superficiality in thinking, difficulty in reflecting in a systematic, integrated and coherent way.
This is why the problem is not multitasking itself, but educating people to understand how digital logic works, deepening the understanding of the value and importance of consciousness in choices and decisions. It is through awareness that freedom, respect for others, a sense of the sacredness of the body, and the value of sexuality are educated.
Do you agree with this statement: “I believe that the most damaging effect of the digital world is the parent's dependence on digital media, which ends up becoming their children’s dependence”? How important is the example given by adults (perpetually with their nose in their smartphone)?
Let me answer these two questions by saying first of all that we are all citizens of the digital world. We are all immersed in this reality physically, emotionally and socially. We live in this digital habitat day and night. We talk to people on the phone, record and send videos, shop, manage our bank accounts, documents, travel, manage our work projects, business agendas, education and entertainment. In this sense, we live in a real digital reality. And we absolutely must not separate the real world from the virtual one.
Today we live in two times that intersect and complement each other. Parents and children live and grow up in the digital reality, which is a truly new world.
If we live in a digital world, we have to be very careful when we talk about digital addiction. So far there has not been a common view from new technology specialists and the international communities of psychology and psychiatry about psychological addiction to the Internet. The Church itself does not mention such dependence in any of its documents.
The issue of addiction at a psycho-physical level is very complex and involves many factors. Let’s take an example: a young man who finishes university, looks for a job and cannot find one. In his personal dimension he feels useless and suffers psychologically from problems of self-esteem, estrangement from friends and difficulties in building his own life. If this young man spends all day on the Internet, isolating himself from his friends, we ask ourselves: what is the main cause of his isolation and excessive use of social networks? In this case, lack of work is definitely the factor that causes emotional and social imbalance.
Obviously, we are not blaming the digital world or denying the personal responsibility of each person (able to make their own choice freely). We must therefore carefully analyse each case to discuss and evaluate the situations affecting how to live in a healthy digital environment.
Since the topic is so new to researchers, we should always look at this topic from an interdisciplinary perspective, how the various sciences can collaborate to understand the different manifestations of addiction. In this way, we avoid using the term addiction only for digital matters. In some particular situations, the digital theme can also be used as a factor of causality or correlation, but we must avoid generalising.
Edited by Bruno Ferrero,
Editor of the Salesian Bulletin
