I can't get no satisfaction

A Slate article by Emily Yoffe from last August reveals why most of us will spend hours checking obscure factoids on the Internet. It turns out such “seeking” behavior gives us an agitated high – the force that drives rats with electrodes inserted in the appropriate part of their brains to keep pressing that proverbial lever until they collapse from mental and physical exhaustion. Oh, to what lengths the human animal will go in pursuit of a high… A recent New York Times article (“Choking Game No Mystery to Children…”) says over five per cent of kids in Oregon have tried “the activity, in which adolescents try to achieve a high by briefly depriving the brain of oxygen through strangulation” – a desperate kind of thrill seeking which has produced dozens of deaths in recent years. Still, the obsessive/addictive behavior described by Yoffe seems more troubling in the long run, since it affects 99.9 per cent of kids in areas enjoying the amenities of modern living. Another NYT article reports the finding of a recent study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the use of electronic devices by children 8 to 18 years old in t6he US. It turns out they now spend on average 7.5 hours a day plugged into such devices, not counting 1.5 hours of texting and 0.5 hours speaking on their cell phones. This is an increase of over an hour as compared to the previous study done five years ago – when researchers had concluded that the use of electronic devices could not possibly go up because there are only so many waking hours in a day. Now it has – as a result mostly of the recent advent “smartphone” which allow their owners to be constantly hyperconnected. Those devices in the hands of teenagers – and most adults – make the itch to constantly seek information and entertainment online virtually irresistible, with incalculable consequences for the brain development of coming generations. The biggest culprits here are, of course, Apple and Google. I am thinking of Google’s famous slogan: “Don’t Be Evil.” Having a business model aimed at breaking down any remaining inhibitions to the headlong embrace of incessant impulsive behavior in billions of people (how else can you generate those quazillions of billable clicks every day?) is maybe less evil than the Rwandan genocide. Still, this must be the most hilarious piece of corporate propaganda in history. I hope Brin and Page will be clutching their Nexus phones as they slowly turn on those giant pitchforks alongside other overly ambitious geeks - so they could check out online (after)life on the other side...