Sometimes You Don’t Need It Right This Second

I don’t want to sound like a cranky old person or an alarmist, but I’m worried about young people’s brains. I think it’s a shame that advancements in technology, as convenient as they’ve made life, also come with the slow atrophying of our frontal cortices.

It’s very concerning that as a species, we have lost and are continuing to lose several key skills. We no longer have the ability to be patient, we also seem unable to remember anything, we are not as creative as we used to be (in my opinion), and if we have to be bored for a mere 60 seconds, our minds will explode.

I actually still have many memories from the early 2000s. I know, I know guys, everyone on earth thinks that life was better when they were younger. Yes, I am biased. Yes, nostalgia is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but also, objectively, things are getting worse for our cognitive abilities.

Back in my day (haha), things did not happen at the snap of my fingers. It was normal to wait for things. Downloading files took forever, travel took long, shopping was done manually, you had to hope and pray your favourite music played on TV that day, you sent a letter and waited for a response, if dad was watching soccer, then I could only watch cartoons in an hour. I could list a million ways our brains were okay with waiting. We were okay with wanting something and not having it in that exact moment.

Do you remember boredom? There was a time in our existence where the thought of an idle mind did send us into an uncontrollable spiral. In fact, being bored actually used to lead us to being creative. Before online games, social media and ChatGPT, if I had nothing to do, I would at least daydream, talk to myself and make up fake scenarios.

These days, you never ever have to be bored. You don’t have to wait. Magic is essentially real and you can snap your fingers and have anything you want at any moment.

If it so suits you, you could doomscroll for 24 hours straight. The internet does not have an opening and closing time like when the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation would shut down at the end of the day and have no programming for a few hours.

There is an endless stream of stimulation. I can order alcohol, clothing and books online. There is nothing I have to wait very long for, and according to the American Psychological Association, constant digital stimulation is associated with reduced attention spans, increased distractibility and greater dependence on external memory tools like smartphones.

That cannot possibly be good for us. I grew up in a pretty analog time, and messed up my attention span after my executive functions, voluntary movement, social appropriateness and personality had already been developed.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a child right now with all this instant gratification and all these screens in their faces. Children in the developed world no longer need to spend hours on end just using their imagination to expand their thinking and reasoning. Everything is at the tips of their fingers.

The World Health Organisation warns that excessive screen time in young children is linked to delayed cognitive development and reduced imaginative play.

When I was young, I was a prolific reader. I used to see movie trailers and then look for the book and read ahead. When I wanted to know something, I would look up the information in an encyclopedia and sometimes it would take weeks for my curiosity to be satiated.

I did a lot of research, looked at multiple sources and then formed an opinion. I memorised cellphone numbers, birthdays and addresses. If the information was too much, I would fill books with pages and pages of handwritten notes.

Now I feel like I have devolved. I rely on my phone so much. I’m not even sure I’d be able to spell anything without autocorrect and it’s quite embarrassing.

I can’t help but think of that animated film ‘Wall-E’. It’s set in the future where technology has advanced quite far, to the point where humans are chair-bound, obese idiots. If there’s no need for us to use our brains to do anything, then why would they keep working at their fullest potential?

It’s like how exercise didn’t exist until humans found ways to alleviate the physical labour of daily life. Suddenly, we realised that if life becomes easy, we become useless, so we have to supplement our lives with extra movement.

Where and what is the exercise for our minds? Do I need to read more? Do word puzzles? Avoid my phone altogether? How do I balance this with keeping up to date with the modern world and alleviating the burdens of being alive?

If anyone knows what I can do so that my brain doesn’t melt and leak out of my ears, please do let me know.

– Anne Hambuda is a writer and social commentator. Follow her online or email her at annehambuda@gmail.com for more.

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