Shallow. Our brains are shallow. Or at least they have become shallow. This is the point Nicholas Carr drives home in his book The Shallows, where he examined the impact the internet has had on the human brain. Almost at the middle crease of the book, he writes:
The information flowing into our working memory at any given moment is called our “cognitive load.” When the load exceeds our mind’s ability to store and process the information—when the water overflows the thimble—we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with the information already stored in our long-term memory. We can’t translate the new information into schemas. Our ability to learn suffers, and our understanding remains shallow. Because our ability to maintain our attention also depends on our working memory—”we have to remember what it is we are to concentrate on,” as Torkel Klingberg says—a high cognitive load amplifies the distractedness we experience. When our brain is overtaxed, we find “distractions more distracting.” (Some studies link attention deficit disorder, or ADD, to the overloading of working memory.) Experiments indicate that as we reach the limits of our working memory, it becomes harder to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information, signal from noise. We become mindless consumers of data.
Carr, The Shallows, 125, emphasis added
Carr’s criticism of the internet’s effects on our minds is one of many to have emerged since he first published The Shallows in 2009. What makes Carr’s take on the impact of the internet so poignant is the way he connects his evaluation to brain neurology and habit formation.
I am returning once again to the topic of habit formation as I continue to work on the forthcoming eBook “A Guide to Implementing Habit Training”. We can pull at some of the strands Carr uses to make his point in order to deepen our understanding of how habits are formed and how this relates to the nature of our minds.
Meet Hebb and Zeno
In their book You Are Not Your Brain, Schwartz and Gladding spell out the connection between Hebb’s Law and the Quantum Zeno Effect in the formation of habits. The Hebb of Hebb’s Law is Donald Hebb who wrote The Organization of Behavior in 1949. This is how Hebb expresses the key idea:
When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A‘s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.
D. O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior, 62
This process induces “lasting cellular changes that add to [the] stability” of persistent or repeated actions. Popular literature summarizes this law by saying that “cells that fire together wire together.” In other words, if you have an action that you want to make a persistent or repeated action, you can connect it to another action so that they occur with one another. For example, if I want to make my bed every day, but fail to do so, I could potentially connect making my bed with a regularly occurring action, such as putting on my shoes, to strengthen my ability to regularly and persistently make my bed every day. Hebb’s Law is a fundamental building block for habit formation. The neurons in our brains like to work together.
The Zeno of the Quantum Zeno Effect is Zeno of Elea, a Greek philosopher who posited a number of paradoxes, many of which have come down to us through the writings of Aristotle. The Quantum Zeno Effect as it relates to neuroscience applies Zeno’s paradoxical thinking to the mind-brain problem. This is a field of philosophical, psychological and scientific exploration too wide for the modest aims of this blog post.
To summarize the matter succinctly, the physical matter of our brains is different than the metaphysical reality of our minds. Does the brain cause the mind? Does the mind control the brain? The application of quantum physics poses a solution by suggesting that while the mind is dependent upon the physical properties of the brain, the mind simultaneously has the ability to augment the brain. (The quantum mechanics of the event means that one cannot observe a single instance of one operation occurring before the other in a linear sequence.) If you’re like me, your brain might get sore and your mind might be blown thinking through these concepts. Putting the cookies on the bottom shelf, the Quantum Zeno Effect implies that we can change our brains through the work of our minds.
Schwartz and Gladding combine Hebb and Zeno to tell us that we can make new habits by self-consciously focusing our attention repeatedly on a preferred action—a good habit. Neuroplasticity (the concept that the physical neural networks in our brain are ever changing) means that our brains can indeed change. The Zeno effect means our minds can be used to change those neurons. Hebb’s Law means we can build neuron structures upon one another. If we establish a set of good reps to build a habit, our neurons will capture that network structure, making it stick in our physical brain structure. That’s the good news. That route you take home from work is automatic now, isn’t it? That’s your brain creating a neural network to assist you so that you don’t have to figure out how to get home every day. Your brain would rather think about other things during the drive, so it automates the route home. Good news, huh?
Carr highlights the bad news, though. Bad habits also have sticking power too. Without any effort on our parts, neural networks are forming all the time. We often have little control over the habits that get formed, good or bad. The power of habit formation is at the same time the problem of habit formation. Our brains are constantly figuring out ways to efficiently automate processes to cope with our environment. What Carr points out is that our environment has been inundated with the internet and the devices with which we access the internet.
Internet Brain
The subtitle of Carr’s book is What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Critics of The Shallows point out that the internet has been unfairly vilified. The internet hasn’t really done anything. The critics are actually correct. It’s our brains that have done all the work. We need to reverse the subject and object of the subtitle: perhaps something like, What Our Brains Have Done because of the Internet. We could nitpick the subtitle, but the material point of the book stands, the internet is a major factor in our environments now and our brains are responding to it in shocking new ways.
If you wanted to invent a device that optimized our ability to create new habits, you would want something that focused your attention repeatedly, pampered your brain with rewards, and was constantly in your environment. The internet is that device. Carr writes:
One thing is very clear: if, knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Internet. It’s not just that we tend to use the Net regularly, even obsessively. It’s that the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli—repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions. With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use. At the very least, it’s the most powerful that has come along since the book.
Carr, The Shallows, 116
The mind-altering ability of the internet is stunning. Certainly not all of the alterations have been bad. With infinite access to information, people can learn anything, potentially bettering their lives by creating new possibilities through knowledge and skills that were previously inaccessible to the masses. However, the alteration of our minds due to the internet has had some devastating impacts on us that should give us pause as to the overall evaluation of the internet’s benefits.
In a webinar Jason and I produced recently, we talked about the impact of the internet in the home, touching briefly on the detrimental impact internet devices can bring. Many parents are deeply concerned about social detriments such as cyber bullying, hypersexualization, unwanted advertisements and spam that target impressionable children. Internet users of all ages are aware of security threats posed by hackers. Identity theft is a nightmare that requires constant vigilance.
There certainly are danger “out there” when it comes to the internet. Carr’s book, though, highlights the dangers within. We have already alluded to the addictive nature of the internet: “The Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli—repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions” (166). Just evaluate yourself the next time a little, red, numbered badge pops up on your iPhone. How long does it take you to click on your message or social media app? It’s hard to resist. Why? Because your brain really likes the release of chemical neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, that occur when you click on one of these. Our minds are constantly programming themselves, and our devices are great habit training tools, just more often than not they are training habits we would likely rather not have. Nobody likes the empty feeling after binging YouTube for an hour. But the addictive habit got set, so more likely than not a binge will happen again. This feels really shallow.
As the addictive behaviors associated with the internet increase, so our attention decreases. Let me quickly correct myself. It’s not exactly that our attention decreases, it’s actually that our ability to focus our attention on work that really matters decreases. Meaningful, complex and important work requires the kind of attention that can cut through distraction. Work of this nature requires the mind to hold together nuanced and complex pieces of information in the memory. Carr notes that despite its promise to store lots and lots of information so that we don’t need to store it in our memory, the internet is actually “a technology of forgetfulness”:
What determines what we remember and what we forget? The key to memory consolidation is attentiveness. Storing explicit memories, and equally important, forming connections between them requires strong mental concentration, amplified by repetition or by intense intellectual or emotional engagement. The sharper the attention, the sharper the memory. . . . If we’re unable to attend to the information in our working memory, the information lasts only as long as the neurons that hold it maintain their electric charge—a few seconds at best. Then it’s gone, leaving little or no trace in the mind.”
Carr, The Shallows, 193
Watching a sequence of unrelated YouTube videos, clicking through a variety of Wikipedia pages or scrolling through items in a news feed feels an awful lot like we learned lots of great information. We feel informed. But the information tickled a neuron and then left a second later, never to be thought of again. That feeling of being informed is a self-deception that contributes to our general lack of attention, or should I say the kind of attention that is satisfied with a quick neurological fix. Habit training is always going on. The internet does a great job of training the habit of shallow attention.
Analogue Habits
To cultivate a new mind, one that has a strong attention span, we need to train the mind using habits. Yes, the very same habits that the internet uses so well can be used to counteract these effects. Let me suggest three great habits—analogue habits—to incorporate into your day (or your children’s/students’ day).
First, build the habit of disconnecting from the internet. Establish a time when you completely disengage from the internet, your devices, any screens that keep you from doing something truly meaningful. Most of us have to connect to the internet to do our work on a daily basis. But that doesn’t mean you can’t wrest control of some portion of your life back from the ever-present internet. Ironically, you can use your phone to set reminders to not use your phone. You can use your phone to set a timer to spend 30 minutes not on your phone. But perhaps you need a complete separation just to get deliverance. Ask a friend or a spouse to help you follow through on a daily commitment to spend 30 minutes device free, doing something meaningful.
Second, find something—anything really—to invest in that will build your attention span. Read books, practice the piano, draw in a sketchbook, write fiction, or tend to a garden. Whatever it is, make sure it has no connection to the internet and invest yourself in it for a good span of time. Your brain will begin to lay down neural pathways that produce strong mental concentration. You can feel yourself becoming less shallow the more you invest yourself in a deep activity.
Third, build the habit of an extended conversation with someone. Invest yourself in actually sitting down, face-to-face, making eye contact and talk with them. It’s amazing how awkward this feels when you first start to listen and share. But as extended conversation becomes more of a habit, that desire for human connection grows. Make rules for yourself. Talking with someone during a commute doesn’t count. Reviewing the calendar for the week ahead doesn’t count. Retelling the forty memes I saw this morning doesn’t count.
I conclude by admitting that the internet is a fantastic tool. This article was written using the internet. I did some of my research for it using the internet. You will be reading it using the internet. But there is an inherent danger in many tools. (I, for one, have avoided using chainsaws because the inherent danger has put me off trying to use it as a tool.) One of my favorite comedians, David Mitchell, recently published a book entitled Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy. One of the points he makes is that the internet is a more dangerous invention than nuclear weapons. How’s that for a provocative warning? I also just came across an article, written by Tony Stubblebine, who has numerous suggestions for how to configure your iPhone to minimize it’s addictive features and make it a better tool.
If we are to see a Renaissance in education, cultivating habits of deep thinking and long attention spans will be essential. Is there a place for the internet in education? Sure there is. But the dangers inherent in the internet as an educational tools should caution us against a wholesale adoption of it as the means to a better education. Instead, training students to have strong minds and focused attention will make them better users of the internet as a tool.
Download Patrick’s eBook “A Guide to Implementing Habit Training” now.