Digital technologies present a dilemma. They have become indispensable for learning skills, building knowledge, working, playing, and socially connecting. The COVID pandemic has accelerated our reliance on them but also highlighted problems that extend beyond persistent disparities related to access and algorithmic bias. There is mounting concern that these technologies, and the screens on which they display, may be changing our brain circuitry, eroding our deep reading abilities, memory, and comprehension, with implications for our physical and mental health, education, relationships, and even the polity. Does our experience in the digital world represent a difference in degree or kind compared with previous technological shifts? What can we learn from new techniques that measure refined increments of our physiological and psychological states and the sociological dynamics of our lives as they play out on digital screens? Just how should we raise young learners today? Join Nilam Ram, Byron Reeves, Abby Smith Rumsey, and Maryanne Wolf in conversation with John Markoff as they explore the profound implications of digital technologies for influencing the intellectual, social, emotional, and ethical development of younger generations and, potentially, the cerebral evolution of our species.
This is episode 11 of “Social Science for a World in Crisis.” https://casbs.stanford.edu/webcasts