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  1. The Globe and Mail2/9/189 min
    8 reads4 comments
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    The Globe and Mail
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    • Pegeen
      Top reader this weekReading streakScoutScribe
      5 years ago

      It seems like so many articles today point in the direction of technology changing the way our brains work - and, unfortunately, it’s not good. This author grew up reading books the old fashioned way and felt that she would be immune to such changes as lack of attention and cynicism. Not so because synapses adapt. It’s always encouraged by experts to unplug and disengage for a period of time in your day. Meditation, walks in nature, artistic pursuits all allow for a more expansive and deeper experience of life. I feel truly blessed not to have grown up with technology. I have the freedom to use it for the good it provides but can leave it all behind without a nagging impulse to check in. My hope is that young people today find a healthy balance in their own lives because, as cliche as it sounds, patience is a virtue worth cultivating.

    • jlcipriani5 years ago

      I am afraid of this phenomenon in myself. I feel the jittery hunger for constant small dollops of experience and information. I am like a duck that has been perceptually been fed bread chunks thrown directly at it and has lost the patience for the unreliable dive.

    • joanne5 years ago

      love it, so true. Not only is reading the best way to learn something, it's the best way to develop empathy. Learning about how others live in fiction or non-fiction gives us a window into how to be human.
      I love that electric shock story....we humans are a little crazy.

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      5 years ago

      All is not (yet) lost. As long as we keep reading we’ll be able to keep reading. The expression ‘use it or lose it’ really applies here.

      Even Eric Schmidt, the erstwhile chief executive of Google, was anxious about the mental landscape he was helping to cultivate. He once told Charlie Rose: "I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information … is in fact affecting cognition. It is affecting deeper thinking. I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something. And I worry that we're losing that."

      How primed are we for distraction? One famous study found humans would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 10 minutes. We disobey those instincts every time we get lost in a book.