<\/p>\n
This week I\u2019ve been at SXSW London. There\u2019s been music, film, and a lot\u2014and I mean a lot<\/em>\u2014of talk about AI. I also had the opportunity to sit down with Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the last 30 years studying how people interact with digital technologies.<\/p>\n Early in her career, the biggest concerns were the potential impacts of internet and email use on our brains. We may laugh those concerns off today, but it\u2019s true that as the technologies became more ubiquitous and ingrained in our daily lives, our attention spans began to shrink.<\/p>\n Mark is worried that things are only getting worse. The title of our session was \u201cHave we lost control of our brains?\u201d Unfortunately, Mark told me, the answer is yes.<\/p>\n Around two decades ago, Mark started wondering about how our use of devices might affect our attention spans. She set up what she calls \u201cliving laboratories,\u201d using sensors and trackers to monitor adult volunteers\u2019 attention, mood, and behavior when they were using devices.<\/p>\n In 2003, she found that the average user had an attention span of around two and a half minutes. That\u2019s how long people could spend focused on one thing before moving on to something else. \u201cThat surprised me at the time,\u201d she told me during\u00a0our session on Wednesday. \u201cI thought: Wow, this is really short.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n But when she repeated the experiment in 2012, she found that attention spans had shrunk\u2014all the way down to around 75 seconds on average, she said. In research she conducted between 2014 and 2020, attention spans shrank further still\u2014to a mere 47 seconds, on average. Yikes.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not good for us.<\/strong> Mark told me that she\u2019s found switching our attention so frequently is stressful. \u201cWe would have people wear heart rate monitors, and \u2026 we would see direct correlation between switching attention fast and stress going up,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n All this distraction makes it harder for us to get stuff done, too. \u201cIt just takes longer to do any single task if you\u2019re switching your attention,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s not great for performance. It\u2019s not great for our emotional well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s for adults. What about the effects of digital technologies on children? A few months ago, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and Google\u2019s YouTube\u00a0were ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to a 20-year-old woman who had accused the companies of creating products that led her to develop a childhood addiction.<\/p>\n Just a couple of weeks ago,\u00a0Meta settled another lawsuit, this one brought by a rural school district in Kentucky. The district had also accused the company of designing addictive products that were harmful to students and had sought more than $60 million to cover the costs of their mental-health needs. Around 1,200 other school districts are taking similar legal action against social media companies.<\/p>\n But social media isn\u2019t all bad, all the time. <\/strong>It can provide opportunities for some people, including those from marginalized groups, to form connections that might otherwise be difficult. A\u00a02024 survey of LGBTQ+ teenagers found that while some described social media as a place of rejection and fear, others described it as a place where they felt a sense of belonging, where they could develop friendships and cultivate their identity.<\/p>\n In truth, we can\u2019t definitively say what effects using social media is having on children across the board, says Mark. \u201cThere have been lots and lots of studies, and the evidence is to date inconclusive,\u201d she told me. (Despite\u00a0what you might read in best-selling books on the subject.)<\/p>\n Mark is hopeful that large, long-term studies might finally start shedding a bit more light on this question. An effort of this nature is\u00a0underway in Australia, which enacted\u00a0a social media ban for under-16s at the end of last year.<\/p>\n Given this uncertainty over a 20-year-old technology, I wondered if Mark had any thoughts on the potential impacts of AI\u2014an obviously much newer offering that within the space of a couple of years appears to have become\u00a0deeply integrated into our digital lives.<\/p>\n She told me she\u2019s worried.<\/strong><\/p>\n When we put in effort to do something\u2014such as evaluating or summarizing content\u2014we\u2019re doing what\u2019s known as \u201cdepth of processing,\u201d she told me. \u201cWhen you\u2019re actively engaged with information, you\u2019re processing it on a very deep level,\u201d she said. \u201cThen you\u2019re more likely to learn it, to understand it, [and] to retain it.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not happening when most people use AI bots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. When we ask these tools to write, summarize, or evaluate for us, we\u2019re no longer doing that depth of processing. \u201cYou\u2019re deferring your cognitive work to AI,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n The risk is that our cognitive abilities will weaken over time. \u201cIf you\u2019re not constantly exercising your muscles, they can atrophy,\u201d Mark said. \u201cAnd\u00a0that\u2019s exactly what can happen with our minds.\u201d People with weaker critical thinking skills are more likely to fall prey to misinformation, she added.<\/p>\n Interactions with AI-powered \u201csynthetic companions\u201d can be just as harmful. Relationships between human beings take work\u2014time, effort, and understanding. None of that is needed if you\u2019re forming a relationship with a sycophantic bot. The \u201cmuscle\u201d we risk atrophying here is emotional intelligence, which surveys suggest is already on the decline, said Mark.<\/p>\n She\u2019s not painting a particularly rosy picture.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf we continue on this trajectory, attention spans are diminished, loneliness is rising, boredom is rising, emotional intelligence decreasing, and actually our sense of purpose, according to studies, is also decreasing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Luckily, she thinks we can course-correct by changing our relationship with these technologies. The key factor is effort.<\/p>\n The more effort we put into something, the deeper the satisfaction we stand to gain, Mark told me. That means making an effort to read a book rather than skimming its summary, and to meet with friends in person when you can. Try not to use GPS in places where you can probably manage without it.<\/p>\n \u201cI love technology; we can\u2019t give it up,\u201d she told me. \u201c[But] we have to learn how to create new life routines.\u201d<\/p>\n This article first appeared in The Checkup,\u00a0<\/em>MIT Technology Review\u2019s\u00a0weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,\u00a0<\/em>sign up here<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n #chatbots #making #lose #control #brains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week I\u2019ve been at SXSW London. 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