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Say the words "Internet" and "health" to anyone and they'll probably think that you want to talk about Dr. Google (sore + boobs + breastfeeding + help). Maybe, if they're really geeks, they'll think that you have something to say about the mental and emotional health benefits of online community, or about how immediate access to medical research online empowers us to better understand our own health. Or maybe, if they're up on their reading, they'll anticipate your thoughts on how the Internet is rotting our brains and making us stupid and basically causing an epic, collective, neurological health FAIL.
Which is basically what some people who should know about these things are saying these days.
It all started with that article in the Atlantic last summer - "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" (see what they did there? STOOPID. Ha ha ha. Google humor! Very cerebral!) - in which the author speculated as to the long-term cognitive consequences of our dependence upon the Internet. Then, just last week, a leading neurologist suggested that excessive use of online media could "permanently alter our brains and trigger neurological disorders." And today,on Salon, Rebecca Traister wrote about her decision to wean herself from her addiction to the Internet by downloading a program - tellingly called "Freedom" - to her computer to force her to take breaks from Internetting. She didn't say explicitly that she feared that her brain was melting, but it was strongly implied:
Even as a comparative Luddite, I find myself bewitched, bewildered and deeply bothered by the number of minutes, hours, days I spend circling the online drain. As anyone who spends most working days staring at a computer screen knows, there is no such thing as sitting idle anymore. Those little desk toys they used to sell -- the plastic bird who teeters and totters until its beak finally dunks into the water glass -- are relics at this point. Like the notion of being unreachable at certain hours of the day or night, they are laughable reminders of a world long gone. Who would have the patience to wait for the beak to hit water? We'd all be hitting "reload."
Instead of watching plastic balances, we stare idly into a scrim of ever-updating images, words, videos, letter threads, some that calm us, some that raise our blood pressure, until finally the day is over, and we go home, log on, and do it again. Or at least I do.
(Implied: HALP MY BRAIN IS MELTING.)
I read this and I thought two things: 1) I don't need software to enforce downtime from the Internet - I have hardware for that, and they are 10 months and 3 years old, respectively, and 2) uh-oh, mah brain, it is in trouble. Because even though my children force me give me ample reason to shut the laptop for extended periods of time, I still spend a lot of time on the Internet. A lot. Much of my professional life is here, and it runs 24-7. Much of my social life is here, too.
But it's not so much the online writing and socializing that has me worried. I have, after all, argued here before that blogging saved my life - if we understand 'life' as 'mental health' - and that mothers in particular are better off health-wise for having the Internet. It's that in the course of all that writing and socializing, I've come to depend upon havign immediate and unfettered access to information - information that I used to use my brain to find and process and apply to my work and social intercourse. Today, for example, I couldn't remember the title of the Jules Verne novel about travel that isn't Around The World In 80 Days. So I googled Jules Verne travel balloon, and got my answer. Which, awesome, right? Wrong. That book was on my bookshelf, not ten feet away. I forgot that it was there, because instead of plumbing my memory for details of my relationship with that work (did I use it in a lecture? write a paper about it? discuss it with academic colleagues over coffee? read it on vacation, over a latte?) I just defaulted to ask the Internet. I didn't use my brain; I used Google.
Which, some say, is just the first and most dangerous step on the road to brain meltage. That neurologist that I mentioned earlier, Susan Greenfield, said, in an interview, that "the brain is susceptible to
