{"id":5272,"date":"2010-12-13T10:59:02","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T18:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=5272"},"modified":"2010-12-13T11:08:02","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T19:08:02","slug":"digitally-dangerous-rewiring-our-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/digitally-dangerous-rewiring-our-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Digitally Dangerous, Rewiring Our Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chuck<\/a>
Chuck Colson<\/figcaption><\/figure> 12\/13\/2010 – Chuck Colson –
\nSpending too much time in the digital world, which hurts our ability to focus, is going to make it hard to engage in spiritual disciplines, which require concentration. And our minds will not develop as God intended them to. […]<\/p>\n

Vishal is a bright high school senior who hopes to study filmmaking in college. There\u2019s just one problem: Vishal is rewiring his brain in such a way that he may never enjoy the career he dreams of.<\/p>\n

As Matt Richtel reports in the New York Times, like many teens today, Vishal spends a big chunk of his day on his computer–on Facebook, playing video games, creating digital films, or sending text messages to friends.<\/p>\n

Richtel writes that the digital world\u2014cell phones and computers\u2014may actually be changing how developing brains work. He notes that many kids do homework at the same time they\u2019re texting friends. Others talk on the phone while texting other friends at the same time. And they all spend many hours every week surfing the Internet. <\/p>\n

This kind of activity, according to Richtel, means that the brains of kids like Vishal \u201ccan become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks\u2014and less able to sustain attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

kids who play video games not only damage their ability to sleep well, they also affect their capacity to recall vocabulary words.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In effect, they develop a need for stimulation. That may be why Vishal\u2019s grades are not that great, and why he never got around to finishing the one novel he was supposed to read over the summer for school. As he told the Times, on YouTube, \u201cyou can get a whole story in six minutes. A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, Vishal\u2019s right about that. That\u2019s precisely, of course, the problem. Too much time online also affects the ability of teens to recall their homework\u2014assuming they managed to get it done in the first place. Researchers in Germany found that kids who play video games not only damage their ability to sleep well, they also affect their capacity to recall vocabulary words. One of the researchers, Markus Dworak, told the Times that he wasn\u2019t sure if the problem was the disrupted sleep or \u201cbecause the intensity of the game experience overrode the brain\u2019s recording of the vocabulary\u201d words. Whatever the cause, the result is distracted kids, low grades and unimpressed college admissions staffs.<\/p>\n