I-minds : how cell phones, computers, gaming, and social media are changing our brains, our behavior, and the evolution of our species / Mari K. Swingle, PhD.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An entertaining, scientifically rigorous exploration of the social and biological effects of our wireless world

The way we use i-technology is affecting our health and happiness. While programs, devices, information, and constant connectivity can offer us ease, liberation, and efficiency, they can also rewire our brains to feel restless, disconnected, unable to sleep, anxious, and depressed, with new illnesses like FOMO (fear of missing out), and electro sensitivities appearing.

Engaging and entertaining yet scientifically rigorous, this fully revised and updated second edition of i-Minds comprehensively explores an era of screen-based technology's assimilation into our lives, pondering it as both godsend and plague. Addressing theory, popular media, and industry hype, i-Minds demonstrates:

How constant connectivity is changing our brains The dangers of unchecked connectivity Positive steps to embrace new technologies while protecting our well-being and steering our future in a more human direction.

i-Minds is a must-read for anyone interested in fostering health and happiness, or who is struggling with the role of screened technology in our lives.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Introduction Societal Shifting Every era has an innovation that changes the face of society: the way we think, the way we act and interact as individuals, as a community, and as a culture. As the innovation is introduced, it tends to be greeted with elation. As the innovation becomes integrated and the first societal shifts become apparent, some start to question the balance of benefit and loss in the equation of change. We are now in such a place with digital media. Cell phones, PCs, and the Internet are now completely integrated in global culture, i-culture: welcomed by most, resisted by some, the impact apparent for all. There is great change for the better, but now, a few decades into the assimilation, there is also arguably evidence of an equally negative impact. The darker side of the digital era has emerged. Be it due to naïveté or denial, the negative influences of digital media are expanding, blindly accepted by most -- educators, business, parents, and partners, who later wonder what went terribly wrong. This book will explore such changes and hopefully provide food for thought on what we should embrace and accept, what we should unequivocally reject, and what aspects of the digital era we should now be debating. The debate, unfortunately, often gets sidetracked into generational arguments -- a generational divide wherein the older complain of the younger becoming progressively stupid, rude, and isolating with i-tech at the expense of interpersonal or face-to-face relationships. The young, like any generation before, equally find their pre-i-tech elders ignorant of advancement, judgmental, invasive, and abrasive in their views, feeling they should stop pontificating and get with the times. But we are all missing the point. By sticking staunchly to our positions, we risk missing the fine print: the subtle and not-so-subtle changes in human behavior and underlying brain function that are unequivocally changing all that we are, and the world that we live in. Here we all owe it to ourselves, and the generations that will follow, to open our eyes, look up, and examine change in action, to arm ourselves with information on who we are, and what we wish to become in this new, and yes, wonderful, i-mediated world. ...and now the dark side. First Hints of a Problem Over the past two decades, a select group of scholars and health care practitioners began to systematically note the emergence of a new set of issues seemingly associated with excessive usage and otherwise unhealthy applications of i-technologies. Today the effects are confirmed, notably in the realms of sexuality, socialization, education, and failure to launch. For children, adolescents, and youth, excessive usage of digital media is now highly associated with learning disabilities, emotional dysregulation, as well as conduct or behavioral disorders. For adults, it is highly correlated with anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction and sexual deviation, insomnia, social isolation, disaffected pair bonding, marital conflict, and compromised work performance. In clinical practice, I am also starting to note some rather frightening connections with thwarted emotional and cognitive development in the very young. Opening Our Eyes I would like to think we are wiser now as a global culture, having learned from past mistakes, that we no longer blindly continue on paths of innovation without looking up to examine the potential toll. My last eighteen years working in a clinical environment, however, are telling me otherwise. Unlike excessive consumption or abuse of other substances such as alcohol, food, or drugs, for many, the effects of excessive usage of digital media are rarely perceived as contributing to, never mind as causing, a specific ailment, condition, or conflict. All this said, digital media is here to stay and has unquestionably advanced our world. It is not negative by nature. This is not the claim that this book will make; not by far. But what the Internet and all digital media give, they can also take away. How we use it, interact with it, and depend on it vis-à-vis our "real" world and real relationships within are key. The questions we now need to start asking ourselves are not what the technologies are positively contributing, as these contributions are rather evident, but rather what the technologies are replacing or taking away: an older technology, a behavior, a skill, a relationship, our compassion, values...intelligence? It is time to widen our focus to the broader effects of i-technology in all the branches of our day-to-day lives. It is time to ask ourselves what i-media is truly facilitating. In This Book This book is written from a therapist's perspective. As a practicing clinician, I have based i-Minds upon what has passed my clinical floor: how i-media is affecting children, partners, family, learning. The list is long. Weaving through larger societal shifts, including history, research and hard data, developmental theory, literature on brain function and mental illness, professional reflections, popular literature, and observations from clinical practice, I will illustrate how the medium is influencing our thinking and our processing -- our functioning as a whole. I will look at microcultures, such as high school and bullying, parenting circles, and dating, as well as shifts in macroculture affecting work, sexuality, mental health, learning, play, creative process, attachment, and development itself. I will explore the increase in apathy and general hyperarousal in the masses associated with excessive applications of i-tech. I will also explore the extreme: a new and growing phenomenon threatening to become the addiction of the twenty-first century, referred to as Internet addiction (IA), digital addiction, or i-addiction. The i-phenomenon will be explored in tandem from three distinct angles. * First, I will explore the big picture of what is affecting us all, regardless of age, gender, culture, or creed. * I will also present what appears to be generation specific -- not exclusively by chronological age itself, but rather by age as it relates to the rate of the assimilation of the technologies. * Lastly, I will discuss the effects of digital media in terms of level of immersion: the way, or more specifically the "why" and the "how," some of us are using the medium to the inclusion or exclusion of other activities or relationships. For those of you who are more scientifically or research oriented, supplemental details are presented in sections labeled Scientific Corner. For those of you who are not, these sections can be skipped without losing the general flow. Definitions of some potentially unfamiliar terms and key points will also be included within the text in italics. Interspersed throughout, I will sprinkle advice: solutions, options, and actions one can choose to follow if situations and vignettes seem all too familiar. My goal is to educate, to ensure that i-tech remains a solid complement to all that we are, integrated with but not overriding the human element in cognition and development, work, industry, education, socialization, and play. Great Beginnings Subtle Shifts in Behavior But first, how did this all start? The World Wide Web, as we first called it, was a military innovation that, when it crossed over into civilian life, was embraced as changing the world only for the better. Indeed, in its beginnings, it was most positive. First gaining a foothold in academic communities in the early 1990s, the Internet was the ideal tool for research and learning.1 Soon, no more restrictions on library hours, no more trudging across campus only to find someone else had reserved the book or article you needed. It was also the ideal form of international communication. No more fallen land lines, outrageous telephone bills, and one could see, never mind merely talk to, colleagues, friends, and family while traveling or studying away from home. The Web, as promptly nicknamed, was a most novel and efficient form of communication; it was not location-specific, and was accessible for free with any PC and phone line. In the 1990s many of us had, and used, university-funded email and later messaging, as the most efficient form of communication long before we had, or could afford, cell phones. It soon became apparent, however, that the Internet was also changing "local" behavior. In my own graduate school experience, friends started sending diatribes of thought via email. Discussions we would usually have gathered for and debated over a coffee or a beer were now sequential monologues sent via computer. Although initially most entertaining, some of us, including myself, noted the reduction of face-to-face social interaction and felt something was amiss. Although I did not precisely see it for what it was at the time, I was remotely aware of the development of a bit of a void. I, for one, was missing the reward or pleasure of the face-to-face social engagement. Thereafter, some of us became quite engrossed in these great email dialogues, others less -- still choosing to gather weekly in person. A small and, at the time, barely notable division of social behaviors, and hence social circles, started within our tiny university network. Viewed in retrospect, my experience as a master's student in the mid-1990s was not unique. Very early on, anecdotal reports started to emerge that indeed the Internet was changing social behavior. A rather amusing incident in circulation was how a group of international students was observed in a dorm, laughing and engaging, each with their own PC, rather than socializing with each other. At the time, we found this behavior peculiar and, hence, the story amusing. Why would you choose to play with a computer or communicate with others abroad, when you had friends, company, sitting right next to you? The end of the story was, for its time, a seemingly perfect double twist. Indeed these students were socializing with each other. They were not engaging at all with friends from abroad, but rather with each other in the same room via computer interface. At the time, the behavior raised some eyebrows, but was also simply attributed to the harmless pursuit of novelty of the new medium. What we did not see, however, was that this was a great foreshadowing of things to come, something none of us, at the time, would ever have dreamed of. Now, merely twenty years later, this behavior is not unusual at all: digital interface has become the primary mode of communication for all youth. From Subtle to Extreme -- First Hints of Problematic Usage Beyond amusement, very early on, it was noted that high Internet usage could also have quite serious detrimental effects.2 Parallel to my own graduate school observation of social division, for some, Internet usage was leading to social avoidance and isolation as opposed to broader socialization networks, albeit done under the precise illusion of communication and social interaction. Similarly, in academia, the ideal tool for research and scholarship was negatively affecting academic performance and class attendance. Students were skipping class and handing in assignments late, having stayed up too late playing or "researching" on the Web. For a select group, time that was previously dedicated to work, school, chores, or social interaction with family, friends, and peers was now dedicated to Internet usage -- to the neglect of other activities and interactions. The medium was showing potential to have exactly the opposite of its intended effect: reducing, as opposed to broadening, the scope of socialization, work, scholastic and general life efficiency. For some academics, questions started to arise as to whether this form of excessive Internet usage had the properties of addiction.3,4,5,6,7 The answer now, over twenty years later, is clearly "yes." Excerpted from I-Minds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming, and Social Media Are Changing Our Brains, Our Behavior, and the Evolution of Our Species by Mari Swingle All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

A scientifically rigorous and philosophically challenging argument that digital media is not merely shaping culture, but also the very nature of the human brain.The debate about the ultimate effects of digital media tends to focus on grand cultural shifts or generational divides. But in this debut nonfiction work, Swingle attacks the issue even more elementallyat the level of neurophysiological function. She asserts that the ubiquity of social media and Internet usage, as well as its immersive character, is changing the way the human brain worksand not entirely for the better. In her nearly two decades of experience as a practicing clinician, Swingle says that she's seen children suffer from a wide range of disorders resulting from addictive Internet use, including emotional dysfunction, extreme attention deficits, and serious learning disabilities. In adults, she says, she's seen depression, marital conflict, sexual problems, and anxiety. Her account of the latter is particularly arresting: "In sum, anxiety is on the rise for multiple and somewhat contradictory reasons. We are too busy, yet not busy enough. We put too much pressure on ourselves, but not the right type....Werelease tension and then crash, as opposed to calm naturally into healthy fatigue." She writes that our "brains are speeding up" but not necessarily in a good way, as they're essentially approximating a constant state of heightened arousal. This, she says, makes ordinary experiences of happiness, including sex, increasingly difficult to enjoy. She engagingly posits that this has led to a narrowing of the range of human thought and the unfortunate substitution of shallow entertainment for deep learning. Overall, Swingle's research is impressively meticulous, and it soberly avoids a tone of sensationalist alarm even as it depicts genuinely alarming developments. It's an important contribution to a debate that has lately grown stale and which should be engaged further.A genuinely original position on a historically significant cultural issue. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.