Researcher: Smartphones creating digital zombies

People's brains are being altered by constant exposure, she claims

07/31/2013

By Mark Huffman

Mark Huffman has been a consumer news reporter for ConsumerAffairs since 2004. He covers real estate, gas prices and the economy and has reported extensively on negative-option sales. He was previously an Associated Press reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., a correspondent for Westwoood One Radio Networks and Marketwatch.

One of author Stephen King's horror novels is called “Cell,” the apocalyptic story of a mysterious pulse broadcast over a global cellular network that turns everyone who is talking on their phone at that instant into murderous zombies.

King's point was the fact that almost everyone on earth had a cellphone and was thus vulnerable to zombiehood. Just keep in mind that King's cautionary tale appeared in 2006, a year before the first iPhone and the explosion of smartphones that quickly followed.

Maybe King was onto something. Think of how many people you see walking down the street or in their car, talking – or more likely accessing data. Maybe it doesn't require a mysterious signal to turn us into zombies.

South Korea sets the pace

Devra Davis, Ph.D., president of Environmental Health Trust, a nonprofit research and policy organization, is worried that's what's happening – that smartphones are turning us into digital zombies. It's bad in the U.S., she says, but not nearly as bad as in South Korea – at least, not yet. 

South Koreans have embraced technology with an enthusiasm perhaps unmatched elsewhere in the world. So much so that today, there is a recognized condition of “smartphone addiction” that Davis says is rising to epidemic proportion.

In a recent report South Korean medical researchers are finding a rise in what they call “digital dementia” -- the tendency of the young to be so obsessed with smartphones that they can't recall phone numbers, write legibly or even look people in the eye. Neuroscientists say those are all signs of a type of brain damage.

Davis cites data showing that in South Korea, 20% of 10- to 19 year-olds spend seven hours a day on smartphones and tablets, the highest exposure in the world. According to the Korean Ministry of Science, the country has more digital devices than people (as does the United States), with many children beginning to use devices almost before they can walk.

Left brain – right brain

"Young people who are heavy technology users are likely to have a properly developed left hemisphere of the brain while the right hemisphere will be unused and underdeveloped,” said Psychiatrist Dr. Byun Gi-Won, of the Balance Brain Center in Seoul.

Davis says the evidence is all around for anyone looking up from their screen to observe; young parents glued to their phones while strolling with their toddlers – some of whom are also zoned into their own electronic devices. Families seated for a meal, each immersed in their own screen.

“When we strip away from our lives all the electronified trappings and stuff with which we are so preoccupied; when we throw away all those things we now crave and believe we need, what is left is what essentially makes us human,” Davis said. “The rush to digitize toddlers and young children flies in the face of what developmental psychologists have long understood. Children learn best by direct human touch and eye contact — from real people, not machines.”

Cancer link?

And there is another issue. Davis is worried that the expansive growth of wireless communication is taking place without anyone thinking about the long-term impact it can have on developing brains, bodies and babies who are growing up surrounded by radiofrequency radiation – also known as microwave radiation. This, she says, is something very new in human history.

Her advice to parents? Don't allow children to become fettered to a digital device. If digital devices must be used to distract a toddler on a long car trip, she says, put them on airplane mode and make sure they remain disconnected from Internet or Wi-Fi. Keep calls and connection times as short as possible.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/researcher-smartphones-creating-digital-zombies-073113.html