A pact between schools, governments and companies to curb digital addiction
[ad_1]
Share and conquer. It was the year 2016 and the Economist chose a revisited Latin quote to tell the social streams and to describe the rising star of our connected lives, that Mark Zuckerberg seated on an imperial throne like a Roman emperor of past centuries. Time would later defenestrate the founder of Facebook, but more or less in that same period in a former brewery in Ferentino, twenty thousand souls in the province of Frosinone, a young Roman creative denounced a social media hangover.
Today Mister Thoms, born Diego della Posta, has become one of the most popular Italian street artists (in the photo above “Like a vision”. The mural created by Mister Thoms who from 22 July 2023 will inaugurate a solo exhibition at the Orler Gallery in Orbetello entitled “Never Green”). And he is in good company in the alert of the risks of exposure to the network. «The world characterized by scarcity is today a place based on abundance: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming. All of this replaces feelings of pleasure with pain and dissatisfaction.” Thus Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine and author of the best seller translated into Italy with “L’era della Dopamina” for Roi Edizioni. For Lembke it is the time of “everything and immediately” and this generates unpredictable consequences.
How artificial intelligence algorithms affect
“The world has become a place where anyone can become addicted to anything. With increased exposure, we change the brain into a dopamine-deficient state that leads to addiction. In addition to access and quantity, novelty also multiplies consumption. This is the case with Tik Tok and the infinite amount of videos that can be accessed with a simple touch on the smartphone. The brevity of the videos increases the desire, multiplying the addiction. The artificial intelligence algorithms that learn what we liked act on the search function of our brain», specifies Lembke, who has become a TV icon in America, joining the cast of experts interviewed for The Social Dilemma, the popular Netflix documentary which denounces the impact of social media on our lives.
Young and old are at risk
«We have drugged almost all human behaviors, transforming even the healthy ones. Making human connections is healthy and necessary for survival, but social media anchors the connected human, removing the proactive work needed in everything. It’s like the effort to source that content fails and our system becomes saturated,” says Lembke. The greater the release of dopamine, the greater the possibility of developing addiction to it. But it is not a matter of age and the risks are transversal. “We are all vulnerable. Both young and old have more time and often fill that empty space with compulsive binge drinking.
A pact of rules and incentives
The most exposed part is the Alpha generation born in the new millennium: the risks of these digital drugs are linked to depression, anxiety, insomnia, inattention. But there is a way out and this challenge requires everyone to be involved. Lembke says it clearly. “Schools, governments and companies that produce and profit from digital drugs must come together to protect especially the youngest individuals. We need incentives and disincentives to establish a healthier relationship with technology. That’s why I recommend fasting off our drug of choice, social media consumption, for at least four weeks straight. It is the average time it takes to reset the reward paths. We learn to bind ourselves, to abstain, to limit ourselves, encouraging literal and metacognitive barriers between ourselves and social consumption». Easy said, harder done. Yet something is changing. In some countries around the world, the right to disconnect is governed by federal law or company policy. That phenomenon that started from the zero e-mail friday movement, i.e. the limitation of e-mail to Fridays, has generated followers among the Fortune 500 companies. Log off to rediscover awareness. Yuval Noah Harari also wrote it in his Lessons of the XXI Century: in a world flooded with information, lucidity is power.
[ad_2]
Source link
