The Cyber Effect (12 page)

My underlying belief is that the problem is not technology—but what it is being used for. For the moment, it seems designed to always overstimulate, when just as easily it could be soothing.

Technology offers enormous advantages in terms of accessibility and choice. We can shop online for food and have it delivered conveniently to our door. We can shop for presents and have them delivered to someone else's door. We can purchase everything from clothing to electronics with ease. The problem occurs when this behavior escalates and spins out of control. As it stands now, technology offers the optimum environment for this to happen.

While academics argue whether there is sufficient evidence to describe any of these behaviors using standard addiction criteria, the problems continue to evolve. There is no denying them. Rather than debate their existence, it would be more productive if we could talk about treatment. Abstinence, one of the proven methods for recovery from addiction, is not possible. Giving up alcohol, cocaine, or cigarettes
may be an option in the recovery process for those addictions, but giving up technology is not. Which is why I believe we need to rethink our approach to the concept of Internet addictive behaviors.

The Internet is not going away. We are moving to a place where we don't have a choice but to engage—if you want to study, have a job, do research, be informed, access your healthcare benefits, or pay your bills. Technology has become as natural as the air we breathe, as necessary to twenty-first-century survival as the water that replenishes our bodies. It has become part of our environment. Therefore the challenge could be an evolutionary one. Rather than talking just about addiction, we could discuss
adaptation
.

The best way for an individual to adapt effectively to a new environment is to be informed—know the new environment well, study it, and be aware of the dangers and pitfalls. The Internet could be the most beguiling and enticing creation of humankind. Our evolutionary instincts, such as seeking, make it hard to resist. Not to mention the hooks, signals, alerts, prompts, fun failure, and heart-stoppers. To adapt intelligently, we need to know ourselves well and learn how all things cyber affect our behavior.

For an individual who has behavioral control issues or attention deficits, or who is predisposed toward compulsive behavior or is simply higher on the impulsivity scale, the cyber environment may be problematic. These people are more vulnerable online. It can cause trouble for them the way a racetrack or casino causes trouble for a compulsive gambler. Take caution if you are given to impulsivity.

To me, whether we are clinically “addicted” may have already become an arbitrary argument. Are we addicted to running water and hot showers? Are we addicted to the personal freedom granted by the automobile? A Darwinian approach may be better.
Maladaptive behavior
is a term used to describe attitudes, emotions, responses, and patterns of thought that result in negative outcomes (for example, biting your nails when you're nervous). When presented with a situation, a maladaptive approach seems to render good results, but these are temporary and can lead to greater problems.

If we consider our struggles with cyberspace, it may be shortsighted to get bogged down in the addiction debate. If technology is a substance
that we need—and is central to our survival going forward—then we need to learn to live with it, but on our own terms. Once we realize the specific triggers that facilitate cyber-seeking frenzies, the ones that drive dopamine surges and fuel impulsive, compulsive, or addictive behavior—whether it is online shopping, gaming, or pornography—technology could be designed to be more compatible with its users. Or we could learn to adapt and become more resilient, more restrained and disciplined, more focused and less compulsive.

We are still at the beginning of an unimaginable shift in how we live. Let's give ourselves a break. If you have a problem with technology, perhaps you're not addicted, just
cyber maladapted
. And the good news: There are things you can do about that.

N
ot long ago I was sitting on a train going from Dublin to Galway. A mother and a baby came to sit across the aisle. I had some work to do, some reading, but as we headed west toward the Atlantic Ocean, the countryside of Ireland was so beautiful, I took a break and just enjoyed the view out the windows. Looking at the ever-changing cloud formations passing over the dramatic Irish landscape always relaxes me.

The roads and fields of Galway are lined by spectacular stone walls. The land is stony, and over the centuries, each time a field was cleared, more stones were dug up and more walls and cottages were built. Looking through the window, I thought about all the labor that went into building these walls—the moving of each stone and the artistry of the masons, some of whom also worked on the ancient towers, churches, and cathedrals of Ireland.

Stonemasons loved to work on cathedrals because their stones held the spires aloft. They reached for the sky, for the heavens. And by building the cathedrals, the stonemasons believed they were reaching for something better. Each generation needs to reach for something better—to build things, to create a legacy. As the train jostled and chugged along, I began to ponder the works of civilization being created
now. What fields are we clearing and what is being built? Where are our cathedral spires?

Across the aisle, the mother settled in and began feeding her baby. In a wonderful display of dexterity, she held the bottle in one hand and clutched a mobile phone in the other. Her head was bent to look at her screen. We're all busy these days, and it's hardly my business to judge how a young mum feeds her baby. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I observed her with a researcher's curiosity.
Ethnography
is the immersive study of people and cultural phenomena, when the researcher is embedded in the social group being studied. As a cyberpsychologist, I am living in a continual ethnographic study. Hardly an hour goes by when I don't notice how people are interacting with technology.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed. The mother looked exclusively at her phone while the baby fed. The baby was gazing foggily upward, as babies do, and looking adoringly at the mother's jaw, as the mother continued to gaze adoringly at her device. For half an hour, as the feeding went on, the mother did not make eye contact with the infant or once pull her attention from the screen of her phone.

Forget the lovely view of the Irish countryside, by this time I was riveted to the human scene unfolding across the aisle from me. It was a good thing I was wearing sunglasses.

My mind filled with questions. I couldn't help but wonder how many millions of moms and dads around the world were no longer looking directly into the eyes of their babies while they were feeding or talking to them. Obviously, they might look sometimes, but what if that direct contact was in fact one-half or one-quarter as much as the days when my generation was raised? How will this seemingly small behavioral shift play out over time?

Would a generation of babies be impacted?

Could it change the human race?

Parents usually ask me this question: What is a safe and healthy age for a baby to be introduced to screens? They mean anything from iPads, tablets, and mobile phones to televisions. Without a doubt, this is a very important question. But first, I ask parents to think about this question:

What is the right age to introduce your baby to
your
mobile phone use?

Did you know it's really important to
look at your baby's face
? Feeding and diapering alone aren't enough. A hug and a quick kiss aren't enough. Babies need to be talked to, tickled, massaged, and played with. And they need your eye contact. There is no study of early childhood development that doesn't support this.

By experiencing your facial expressions—your calm acceptance of them, your love and attention, even your occasional groggy irritation—they thrive and develop. This is how
emotional attachment style
is learned. A baby's emotional template, or attachment style, is created (or “neurologically coded”) by the baby's earliest experiences with parents and caregivers. When a good secure attachment is formed by consistent interactions between baby and parents, the template for future emotional connections is more secure. And a secure attachment pattern will give a baby a much better chance at becoming a confident and self-possessed individual who is able to easily interact with others. An individual's attachment style affects everything from how we form friendships to how we choose a life partner to how our relationships may end.

The science of love is fascinating. In the 1930s, Harry F. Harlow, an American psychologist, looked at infant-mother bonds and the impact of maternal separation by
studying baby rhesus monkeys whose mothers had died. He noticed that infants raised in a nursery became very different adults from those raised with mothers. These orphaned monkeys were slightly strange, reclusive, and very attached to the soft blankets in their cages. When these blankets (they were actually cloth baby diapers) were taken away once a day and cleaned, the orphaned babies became super-agitated and upset, often curling into fetal balls and sucking their thumbs. This led Harlow to suspect that physical contact and the role of the primary caregiver were much more important than previously believed. At the time, institutional nurseries and hospitals did not provide physical contact for human babies; it was considered unnecessary, even unhealthy.

Harlow did an experiment allowing the orphaned baby monkeys to choose between two surrogate mothers. One was a wire-framed “mother” that had a milk bottle to feed the baby. The other “mother” was made of soft terry cloth—but had no milk bottle. All the monkey babies preferred their soft terry-cloth mother with no milk, and spent their days cuddling and hugging them, visiting the “bottle mother” only for feeding.

The babies chose tactile love over food in every instance. In a second experiment, Harlow scared the monkeys with a frightening sound or other stimulus in their cages—a banging noise and a robot-type contraption with flashing eyes and moving arms. Panicked and under stress, the babies ran quickly to their soft moms for comfort, clinging to the terry cloth and calming down.

Some baby monkeys were not given soft terry-cloth mothers; instead they were given the wire-frame milk-dispensing machines, and these babies showed much less emotional resilience. When they were frightened by loud, unexpected sounds, they were unable to cope or be comforted. They threw themselves on the ground, clutched themselves, or rocked back and forth, shrieking. This proved that infant love and bonding is not simply a matter of feeding but an important and crucial psychological resource that made the monkeys emotionally stronger.

Like the monkeys, a human being's attachment-style pattern is formed early, but not set in stone. Our emotional template and other templates are continually being updated throughout our lives. The human brain is often described as “plastic,” which means that it is able to change—physically, functionally, and chemically. And for a human baby, a terry-cloth mother who provides only tactile comfort is not enough. Many experiments in the past century have shown the catastrophic effects of sensory and social deprivation during certain critical periods in early childhood, and the subsequent effects on later development. And healthy attachment or “connectivity” patterns have been proven to be important to a child's intellectual growth and progress.

How does bonding work?

A mother and her child need to be paying attention to each other. They need to engage and connect. It cannot be simply one-way. It isn't just about your baby bonding with you.
Eye contact is also about you
bonding with your baby
. In terms of evolutionary theory, infants are soft and cuddly, cute and round, and completely adorable because their appearance lures adults to look at them—attention that they critically need. This is true of baby animals in almost any species. Think of bear cubs, puppies, kittens. (Their popularity on social media networks alone should prove this!) They are soft, round, and supercute, which to date has given them an edge in the competition for attention. If babies weren't so cute, they might not learn to talk, walk—or do hundreds of other things that interaction with their human caregivers teaches them.

When these bonds and connectivity patterns are not formed properly—something that's usually seen in neglectful or abusive homes, or in environments like large orphanages and other institutions where children receive infrequent interaction and don't have the opportunity for tactile stimulation and exploration—a child may even fail to develop the neural pathways necessary for learning. When the deprivation is extreme enough, a child may fail to thrive, may never learn to bond with others. Or learn to love.

We know this because of the examples of children who were raised in isolation or in the wild. There are at least nine famous cases of
feral children
over the past century. And while these stories are sad, the information about child development gleaned by scientists has been invaluable. In each case, the children were accidentally separated from their families, or ran away, causing them to grow up without human contact during their formative years. In several cases, children were raised with packs of wild dogs or wolves, like Mowgli in
The Jungle Book
. How this impacted the child depended on the age when all human contact was removed. But in several cases, children who were raised with dogs or wolves walked on all fours—and barked. A Russian boy who was raised in a room with dozens of birds (his negligent mother treated him like a pet) was rescued at the age of seven by social workers. He couldn't speak, and when he was agitated he chirped and flapped his arms.

There are almost no incidents of a wild child developing into a fully functioning adult (or at least a conventional version of one), because there are windows in the formative years when very specific skills need
to be learned. When those developmental windows close, a child may be developmentally or emotionally crippled for life.

For parents raising their child in a normal household, the simple idea that a baby needs a mother's eye contact—a small but significant aspect to child rearing—probably didn't need to be emphasized until recently. Until sixty years ago, apart from listening to music or the radio, what else was there to do while you fed your baby?

But in the media-saturated environment of the average household, this has changed. And given the size, portability, and interactivity of phones and tablets, an Internet connection and a wireless device now vie with an infant's need for one-on-one interaction on trains, park benches, and even sitting at home on the couch. When fifty-five caregivers with children were observed in fast-food restaurants by researchers for a 2014 study in
Pediatrics
journal, a vast majority of them (forty caregivers) used mobile devices during the meal and some (sixteen caregivers) used their devices continuously, their attention “directed primarily at the device” and not the children. These devices are so compelling that they can overwhelm basic human instincts. Together with the fact that the workday for most adults has become round-the-clock—another change facilitated by technology—parents come home to their young families still distracted by work questions and interruptions. At the office, cyber-slacking is what happens when you check your Facebook wall when you should be knee-deep in a financial-forecast Excel spreadsheet. But the reverse can be true at home. Instead of spending time with their children, many parents find themselves still distracted by their devices. (Remember that statistic from
chapter 2
that mobile phone checking actually increases after work hours?) I assume that in many households, older siblings of these babies are likewise distracted, often entertained by screen games and fun apps rather than occupying themselves with the new baby (as all bored older siblings once did).

Who is the real loser in this new scenario?

The baby.

It scares me to think that this could be the first time you are reading about the importance of face time with your baby (and I don't mean
the app kind of FaceTime). Perhaps it has been drowned out by louder debates. Society has passionately discussed the nutritional values of breast-feeding and the best age and method for potty training. Governments regulate the designs of car seats and mandate the use of them while banning lead paint and flammable sleepwear and bedding. It's hard to pick up a marble or a Lego piece without seeing a printed warning label about choking hazards for children under two.

Of course the primary thing is to keep your baby safe. And obviously, you'll find no argument from me about that. Regulations against the marketing of unsafe toys save thousands of lives each year and result in many fewer children with brain damage due to asphyxiation or poisoning by toxic chemicals. But it might be time to reconsider other less immediate and less obvious dangers.

Am I saying that unless you stare constantly at your baby it will become feral? Obviously not. But I am saying that if the average baby born in 2016 receives significantly less one-on-one interaction, less eye contact, than the average baby born in 1990, there will be an effect or change.

Like what kind of effect?

Let me take a few guesses, the kind that academics like me aren't really encouraged to make—speculation is not considered “good science,” but in some cases it is very necessary. Over time, people could become less able to interact face-to-face, less sociable. People could become less likely to form deep bonds with others, less able to feel or give love, and therefore less likely to form lasting relationships, families, and communities. Some could find physical contact with other human beings problematic and even unwelcome. There could be a domino effect. Subsequent generations could be raised with even less attention, less love—or none at all. While it's true that humans are gregarious by nature, and a search for connection is a basic human instinct and a survival skill, it does not happen magically and on its own. Real-world face time is required. This small and simple thing, millions of babies around the world getting less eye contact and less one-on-one attention, could result in an evolutionary blip.