Artistic Thinking -- Week 7/8

iBrain Read and React

Due to the technological revolution, our brains are evolving at a faster pace than ever before.  Technology is changing how we think, feel, act, and the way in which our brains function.  “This evolutionary brain process has rapidly emerged over a single generation and may represent one of the most unexpected yet pivotal advance in human history.”  While technology produces many positive changes within our culture, it hinders others.  The focus on the Internet and other forms of technology is causing a drift in the brain away from fundamental social skills.  “With the weakening of the brain’s neural circuitry controlling human contact, our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret, and even miss subtle, nonverbal messages.”

            As an art educator is important to note that young minds, the minds of students, are at the most malleable state.  While they are the most exposed and impacted by digital technology, their brains are also in a state of growth that allows them to absorb that which is around them.  The young brain has the ability to be ever changing in response to stimulation and the environment.  “This plasticity allows an immature brain to learn new skills readily and much more efficiently than the trimmed-down adult brain.”  Young minds are morphing in response to their environment, which will eventually have a lasting impact on future generations through evolutionary change. 

Today’s young people have been labeled as “Digital Natives.” These digital natives have grown up never knowing a world without computers, Television, Internet, cell phones, video, cameras, text messaging, etc.  “Young people eight to eighteen years of age expose their brains to eight and a half hours of digital and video sensory stimulation each day.”  Due to the development of this new standard, “the neural networks in the brains of these Digital natives differ dramatically from those of Digital Immigrants: people—including all baby boomers—who came to the digital/computer age as adults but whose basic brain wiring was laid down during a time when direct social interaction was the norm.”  This difference in the evolution of the brain has led to a brain gap between younger and older minds, in just one generation.  What exists now is the formation of two separate cultures: “The brains of the younger generation are digitally hardwired from toddlerhood, often at the expense of neural circuitry that controls one-on-one people skills.  Individuals of the older generation face a world in which their brains must adapt to high technology, or they’ll be left behind—politically, socially, and economically.” 

The way in which younger people express and project themselves is evolving.  Instead of writing down personal thoughts and feelings in a diary or journal, many young people are writing these thoughts and feelings on the Internet for anyone to see.  Is this because they feel there is enough distance between them and their reader to keep them from vulnerability?  Is this because sharing facts about personal lives and personal thoughts has become the new social norm?   

“Natural selection has literally enlarged our brains.  The human brain has grown in intricacy and size over the past few hundred thousand years to accommodate the complexity of our behaviors.”  While the digital revolution and its effect on our brains increases social isolation and decreases interpersonal relationships, “it may well be increasing our intelligence in the way we currently measure and define IQ.  Average IG scores are steadily rising with the advancing digital culture, and the ability to multitask without errors is improving.”  However, with an increase in multitasking comes an increase in stress and attention deficits, as well as a decline in work efficiency. 

With the technological revolution come both inevitable positives and negatives.  Understanding and bridging the newly developed brain gap is an important step we must take that will require two major interventions:  “We need to help Digital Natives learn to advance their interpersonal skills and teach Digital Immigrants to hone their technology skills.  However, both generations must maintain and enhance their abilities to talk face to face, understand subtle nonverbal cues during conversations, and build empathic ways of relating to one another, off line.”