Last night, lying half asleep in bed, I made the momentous decision that I need a break from social media. In my groggy, half crazed state I tried to come up with a word for leaving the virtual conversation for a while and this was the best catchword I could think of to describe it – a nice portmanteau of ‘blog’ and ‘abstinence’. And no, I haven’t googled it – so if someone already coined the term, as they probably have, I promise I came up with it independently.
Recently there’s been a lot of talk of internet usage rewiring people’s brains – much of the debate sparked by Nicholas Carr‘s recent article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. And all I can say is – parts of this article rings as true for me as anything I’ve ever read.
The quote:
My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
elicited nods reminiscent of a bobble headed toy when I first read this article. Or should I say, skimmed it. Because yes, it’s true – I completely empathise with Carr that after many, many years of high intensity internet use, I have a very difficult time focussing on an article even of that modest length and reading it start to finish. My mind skips to the next paragraph and then the next, looking for interesting tidbits to purloin from each block of text, and I’m continually dragging myself back to where I was up to. Even when I do read it, the amount my brain absorbs is negligible unless it’s something I’m really interested in. As the great Arthur Conan Doyle said (via Sherlock Holmes) –
man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
When Holmes said this, he was referring to his lack of knowledge on any subject which wasn’t related to his detective work. His point was that he consciously chose to discard information that he felt would not be directly relevant to solving cases – if he didn’t do this, then he would soon find useless information taking the place of important knowledge and pushing it out.
Right now I feel like my brain is overstimulated. The internet is like masturbation for the mind, and after a decade or more of constant exercise, it’s starting to feel a bit… flaccid. Remembering things is difficult. If I can’t remember something my instant reaction is to Google it. If I’m bored, I have about 8 different forums that I regularly use for conversation, plus a constant stream of witty, useless, interesting and downright rude updates in my Twitter client, as well as Facebook (which I rarely use – SHUN THE UNBELIEVER), email conversations, online shopping, and goodness knows what else.
The point is – it’s amazing that I get any work done at all. (I am on my lunch break as I write this). There is more distraction than there is production. There is more trivia than there is consequence. And I’m just plain dog tired.
So, my Twitter client is off now. The forum tabs are all closed down, bar one favourite (which is also work related). It’s time to make my own entertainment – at least in the time I’m supposed to be working (which between my day job and my personal projects is about 10 hours a day). And there is silence. No stream of news and joke links popping up from Twitter. No tweets about trivialities or conversations about TV shows. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with myself – but surely it can’t hurt.