In The Distracted Mind, the American psychologist Larry Rosen studies the impact of technologies on our behaviors and our brains. Interview.
For more than thirty years, the American psychologist Larry Rosen has studied the impact of technologies on our behavior. In the book The Distracted Mind (The distracted brain, MIT Press, 2016), he returns, with the neurologist Adam Gazzaley, on the consequences of the constant flow of information on our brains, whose capacities to remain attentive are limited. Interview.
During the transcription of this interview, the author of these lines will have consulted his phone 28 times, take a little tour on Facebook, answered 3 emails, hesitated to open Instagram after being notified that “ Jean-Louis has published a story for the first time ”and been distracted by colleagues more often than is reasonable to write. This will undoubtedly be the case for you upon reading this paper, since it is a fact: our world is saturated with information. And things are getting worse every year: pop-ups, mobile alerts, SMS, chat, Facebook notifications, " Did you read this article?" ", Etc.
Adam Gazzaley , professor of neurology in San Francisco, and Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University, explore in depth the impact of what they call “ interference ” on our brains and behaviors. In The Distracted Mind (released at the end of 2016 and not translated into French), the authors explain why our “old” brains, not at all made for multitasking, are saturated.
Their complementary fields of expertise allow them to provide a state of the art of scientific research on the subject, and to demonstrate why we fail to navigate the rough seas of an increasingly invasive technological ecosystem. They also seek to understand how these constant stresses affect our cognition, our work and our relationships. For the authors, “this constant noise degrades our perceptions, influences our language, hinders our decision-making and derails our ability to remember ”.
But don't worry: the authors, like good Americans, also suggest ways to live better in our new technological world. So we took the time to discuss all of these questions with Larry Rosen , a 67-year-old behavioral psychology professor , who says himself " completely obsessed with his phone ".
Usbek & Rica: How do our brains cope with the constant distractions and interruptions we face?
Larry Rosen: The part of our brain that handles distractions is called the prefrontal cortex . It's supposed to work by communicating with the rest of the brain and telling it what to do. The problem is, part of that prefrontal cortex deals primarily with attention, and that's the part of the brain that gets distracted.
"We are constantly on alert, for fear of missing out on what is happening on the Internet, on our phones"
When something in our environment changes, whether it's visual or auditory, it stimulates our prefrontal cortex which is forced to pay attention. When you receive an alert on your smartphone, your auditory cortex communicates with the area responsible for attention, which then shifts to something else: you have been distracted from your task. This reaction to an external stimulus occurs in 50% of cases. The other half of the time, there isn't even a need for an external event. We are constantly on high alert for fear of missing out on what is happening on the Internet, on our phones.
Some call this state “ FOMO ” [ for fear of missing out, the fear of missing something, note ]. But I don't like that term “fear” because it's more of a gradual process, not a feeling that takes you suddenly. Your brain, whether it's in the prefrontal cortex or the seat of emotions, the tonsillar complex , will wonder what's going on in the world. And often this results in a feeling of mild anxiety, which comes from a number of chemicals that are released into your brain and body, including adrenaline and cortisol . This mechanism prompts you to say to yourself: " I haven't been on the internet in a while, maybe I should . So you go for a walk on your social networks or your mailbox, the chemicals disappear, but the cycle resumes immediately.
Is this state of permanent expectation verified empirically in the studies that you conduct?
We conducted a study very recently, on the years 2016 and 2017. The idea was to analyze the time that my students, aged 25 on average, spent consulting their smartphones.
An app on their phone let us know how long their phone was unlocked each day. In 2016, students unlocked their phones 56 times a day, for a total of 220 minutes. That's already a lot: they checked their phone roughly every 15 minutes for 4 minutes, admitting that they slept 8 hours. A year later, with a group of similar individuals, we arrive at the following result: the students unlock their phones 50 times a day, but for a total of 262 minutes. That is more than four hours in all, and more than five minutes for each of their session! All spent mainly on social networks: in order, YouTube , Facebook , Instagram and Snapchat.
"Our brains are still the same as those of our ancestors"
In the first part of your book, you insist on the fact that our brains have evolved in order to be able to achieve more or less long-term goals. How does the constant interference we experience conflict with the way our brains work?
As Dr Gazzaley writes in Part 1 of our book, our brains are still the same as those of our ancestors. They operate by constantly setting goals. “ I want to be a scientist” is a goal, but “ I want to read this article ” or “ I want to eat ” are also goals. When you set a goal, your prefrontal cortex activates, and it begins to make plans to achieve that goal. The problem is, when you're distracted, the prefrontal cortex skips the goal and starts doing something else. Which is annoying, since it takes an average of 20 minutes to get back to the original goal, and you have to restart the whole process.
"Technically, what constitutes us is that we aspire to information"
Is it so bad to be, as you write, " information seeking creatures "?
No, that's what we are! We are creatures constantly seeking information. And we get information from every communication, from everything we read, from everything around us. Technically, what constitutes us is that we aspire to information. Like a squirrel snooping around for acorns in a tree, humans are constantly snooping around for information.
We are all little squirrels looking for information. (CC Flickr )
"All these people are conspiring to divert our attention, they are attention dealers!" "
And developers of mobile applications or websites are well aware of this . They know that if they want to hold your attention, they need to activate your prefrontal cortex. Either by auditory stimuli (videos that launch automatically), or visually (notifications or small animations in the corners of your screens). All these people are conspiring to distract our attention, they are attention dealers! Their job is to sell that attention to other people.
You have been studying these questions for over thirty years. Has there been a real intensification of the distractions we are subjected to in recent years?
Three events changed the game. The first was the creation of the World Wide Web: we were fascinated to be able to communicate with anyone on the planet. It made us feel powerful, but at the same time, with the first notifications from AOL (“You have an email!”), We started to be constantly solicited.
The two other major events responsible for our current level of obsession are the appearance of the smartphone and that of social networks . Smartphones have put the web at our fingertips, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, since the majority of us sleep with our phones next to the bed. Social networks, on the other hand, play on the fact that as human beings, we seek to communicate with others, to be connected to others. All of these platforms conspire to get our attention. And these two events date from less than ten years ago!
Do we have any proof of the impact of this evolution of uses on the way our brain works?
We are running out of time for this, since these changes are recent. Studies are underway on the side of neuroscientists, including my co-author Adam Gazzaley, who is squarely trying to modify our brains by developing a video game to treat children with attention disorders.
Can we change the way our brains work to adapt to our technological environment?
There are two ways to approach possible solutions. The first is to change our brains. The second is to change our behavior, the external expression of our brain. Some video games created especially for this, notably by Dr. Gazzaley, seem to have an impact on the way our prefrontal cortex handles information. But very simple and accessible things can also help us: the impact of nature can reduce the technological overload that our brain experiences, sport or meditation can also help us.
"A person who wants to increase their attention span is told to eliminate for 15 minutes anything that could constitute a distraction in order to focus on a specific task"
On the behavior side, there are also things that can be implemented. First of all, it should be understood that this constant obsession with information did not appear overnight, but over a period of ten years or so. And that we will not get rid of it easily. One of the things I like to advise is a tech break. It's behaviorism in action. A person who wants to increase his attention span, that is to say to avoid distractions, is told to eliminate for 15 minutes anything that could constitute a distraction in order to focus on a specific task. Once the quarter of an hour has passed, the person can take a minute to check their mailbox, their phone, their social networks. One minute is a long time actually. I also recommend setting an alarm, so as not to get caught up in social networks. And then you start over.
"In half an hour, you can do a lot of things, if you are not distracted"
When the person manages to concentrate for a full 15 minutes, it can then increase to 30 minutes. In half an hour, you can do a lot of things if you are not distracted. If you decide to do it, you have to tell everyone. You must advertise it on all your social networks. And specify that you will be connected less often, and a little less responsive. It works, especially with children and teenagers, but it takes time.
Is it that bad to have a constantly distracted brain?
Yes, it's bad, especially biochemically. When we are distracted, our body releases chemicals. I mentioned cortisol and adrenaline. Our adrenal gland releases both in our body, and we start to feel a little tense, anxious. And to put an end to these feelings, we tell ourselves that we have to do something, and we connect.
"If we are perpetually waiting for a text, it plunges us into an anxious state"
What we know is that long-term anxiety and stress are not good. If we are perpetually waiting for a text, an answer to an email, an update from a friend on a social network, that puts us in all our states.
As a psychologist who has worked on this topic with a neuroscientist, do you think the hard sciences are necessary to understand how our brains are affected by technology?
I think it is essential to use all the tools at our disposal. And I think neuroscience could be a big part of the solution. I think we're getting to a point where we can start to measure the impact of these distractions on our brains. It is still expensive, but it is necessary to use tools like MRIs to prove that solutions exist.
If you had to project yourself in ten or twenty years, do you think that we will evolve towards a world in which the demands will continuously increase?
I can't even project myself into the next five years! Already, we will continue to try to measure the impact of this constant flow of information on our brains from year to year.
"The next technology that will constantly demand our attention will be augmented reality"
I think the way we adopt technologies follows a curve: they are adopted very quickly and massively, and then are abandoned in favor of new technologies. The problem is that for smartphones we have not yet reached the top of the curve. I think the next technology that will constantly demand our attention will be augmented reality. We're going to continue to be under constant siege, and we're going to have to decide how much we want to be overrun. But I am not sure that we manage to manage all this: we are still approaching the moment when we will be on our smartphones almost eight hours a day! As a society, we should be aware of what this constant flow of information is doing on our brains. But from what I observe, especially in very young children, we are not taking the path.
