We have heard time and time again that distracted driving, particularly with mobile devices, can kill you. We have seen many public service announcements showing the grave dangers associated with driving and texting--both for the driver and those around him/her. And while the importance of these messages is not under challenge here in this post, there is a sense in which we all get it: driving and texting, driving and talking on the phone, driving and tweeting, driving and Facebooking, driving and fiddling with your iTunes playlist are all dangerous activities (think about the number of times you've changed songs on your iPhone--after, of course, searching for about 10 seconds--and you look up and don't know when the last time was that you saw the road).
However, there is another serious, perhaps more subtle but just as real, threat to your well-being than simply knocking your vehicle into someone else's, or into the side of a pedestrian or trunk of a tree: that the perpetual engagement of your digital device while driving is taking away important down-time needed for reflection, decision making, and dealing with emotional baggage of the day. In a study at the University of California, San Francisco, scientists discovered that when rats have new experiences their brains show signs of new patterns; but those explorations are processed into persistent memory when the rats have taken a break from those activities. And humans have shown to learn in similar ways: We learn most when we step back from a given activity, and, even unconsciously, have time to reflect on them. The New York Times article in which this study was reported continues,
“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
The fear with constant distraction from our digital devices is that our brain patterns are literally being shifted in a way that is detrimental to how we have evolved over time as humans. When you are constantly being stimulated, you are unable to back away and reflect in meaningful ways on the interactions and experiences you've had. We may call this constant stimulation "multi-tasking," but according to some brain researchers, such activity is merely repetitious distraction, which, to many, is actually rewiring our brains:
"Our daily routine is filled with repeated distractions from information that demands our attention; making each day the opposite of “ordinary.” Research is beginning to show that our devices affect our minds cognitive ability to function."
What led to the renaissance period in human history was people's profound ability to learn, reflect on their learning, and create amazing works of art, philosophy, and invention (Leonardo da Vinci was not the anomaly that many make him out to be--there were plenty of them around). We are losing the profundity of the reflective life to the false urgency of the digital device.
What I am getting at here is that the commute to and from work can be a time and space that allows you to reclaim the reflection on your experiences that you desperately need to de-stress, decompress, and just simply process. By remaining hooked up to our digital devices while driving, not only are we endangering our and others' lives, but we are overstimulating our brains, frying our neurons, becoming more stressed, and carrying all that home with us into our families. As one brain scientist responded to a well-known New York Times Op-Ed by popular brain-guru, Steven Pinker,
"The fact that people who fiddle with cell phones drive poorly shouldn’t make us less concerned about the cognitive effects of media distractions; it should make us more concerned."
The concern is, according to Steven Yantis, a professor of psychological and neuro sciences and Johns Hopkins University, each time you switch tasks and switch back again, your brain has to recall where you were in the previous task. This may cause you to have to work your way back through the problem again, or re-read the previous paragraph, which makes "Deep thinking about a complex topic...nearly impossible."
We are not merely robotic computing machines--we are reflective human beings. We live in a complex world in which stepping back from our experiences, reflecting on them, and making deep decisions on them is critical for our well-being and that of our loved ones, friends, and colleagues. Take the time on your commute, especially home from work, to avoid the device. Consider putting it on 'Do not disturb', and then simply work your to not engaging it at all. For not only does it distract from the immediate task of safely operating a vehicle moving on average 60 kilometres per hour but also from the brains natural function of reflecting on past experiences, learning from them, and planning new ways forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment