Screentime: How it Affects Our Brains
Written by Crystal Ruizmun
We live in the age of modernity, the technological age where we have easy and unrestricted access to the entire internet. There is no doubt that we use our phones every day, whether it be for academic, professional, or personal use; we use technology regardless. Depending on your routine, many check their phone first thing in the morning and have it be the last thing they see when they sleep. Besides the negative effects on our eyes, many do not know how it affects our brain as well.
There is a saying that our eyes are the windows to the soul, so the amount of artificial light being afflicted, harms not only our eyes but also our brains as they are connected through the optic nerve. The amount of harm that excessive screen time does is crucial. Its causes include heightened attention-deficit symptoms, especially with the apps that we have on our phones. Short videos like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram reels do cause lower attention spans over time. The consumption of quick, 15-second videos requires us to keep our attention within the first few seconds since many will simply scroll as they are not interested. Many see the long duration of videos and immediately skip because it is too long and they do not want to spend time watching one long video when they could watch about 3-5 quick videos.
Other types of harm cause technology addiction, social isolation, disrupted sleep, and many other harmful effects. The overconsumption of dopamine that doom scrolling does, can cause a technology addiction to constantly check our phones for notifications or go into the same apps every five minutes to scroll through new videos because we are addicted to the dopamine being released. As a result, it can cause social isolation where the only thing one does is look through their phones or play video games, isolating themselves from others to continue gaining the easy consumption of dopamine. Not only this, because of the addiction, it can cause disrupted sleep where someone may use their phones or play video games for hours until the early hours of the day. Disruption like this is extremely unhealthy and not only does it harm the brain, it shortens our life span and can cause memory issues for increased progression of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
We must limit our screen time as much as possible to cater to the type of lifestyles we live. Used in moderation, screen time isn’t too harmful but it is important that we also spend time outside or exercise to produce naturally induced dopamine for our health.
References
Small, G. W., Lee, J., Kaufman, A., Jalil, J., Siddarth, P., Gaddipati, H., Moody, T. D., & Bookheimer, S. Y. (2020). Brain health consequences of digital technology use. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 22(2), 179–187. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2020.22.2/gsmall The Eye-Brain Connection (brainfacts.org)
Written by Crystal Ruizmun from MEDILOQUY