Smartphones Could Contribute to 'Digital Dementia'
Mal Fletcher
Tuesday 31 January 2012
London, England: 31 January 2012 – The growing reliance on digital gadgets could lead to ‘digital dementia’, resulting in a growing inability to concentrate, read other people’s body language, or even manage our finances, according to Social Futurist Mal Fletcher.
The younger generation is in danger of living large parts of their lives at ‘phone call’ level where they are unable to read and respond to non-verbal expressions, gestures and signals, he believes.
In a paper published 31 January 2012, Fletcher argues that what we view as signs of dementia today could become something like the normal state of mind by 2022, with the population showing a decline in mental and social function.
It’s an issue that’s already worrying some people, Mal Fletcher believes: “We start to question our memory because we can’t remember 50 different logins, passwords and pin numbers. In reality our brains haven’t developed to function like that.”
Multitasking, he says, is largely just another word for distraction, and it stops people picking up important signals from the people they’re with.
“If someone is with a group of people and they’re also using their smartphone, then they’re not multitasking, they’re simply spreading their attention more thinly. As a result, they are losing their capacity to listen well and also to pick up those non-verbal signals from other people,” says Fletcher.
“What would happen to a baby’s development if, instead of interacting with a live human mother, it was interacting only with mum on a video screen or even a digitally-rendered hologram? By the same token, what happens to the parts of the human brain responsible for reading physical, biometric signals, when we talk more via text, social networking or online video than we do face-to-face?”
The move towards ‘wave and pay’ systems and using mobile phones as paying mechanisms similarly detaches people from the value of money, the article says.
“We need to be able to associate numbers with substantial objects such as coins and notes,” says Fletcher. “This shows that numerical icons have a meaning in the real world. Without that, and as our mental arithmetic skills continually decline, it will become far too easy to overspend.”
Mal Fletcher, a Social Commentator and Futurist, leads the London-based Think Tank 2020Plus. Widely broadcast and published, he has researched social trends for two decades.
His article, ‘Digital Dementia’ is published 31 January 2012.
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