The fearsome internet meme just keeps going. This week offers an example from the New York Post, with the epic title:
The article hits a bunch of classic scary digital themes. There's the possessed child (who turns away from sports! egads). But the main point is the new classic, medicalized horrod:
We now know that those iPads, smartphones and Xboxes are a form of digital drug. Recent brain imaging research is showing that they affect the brain’s frontal cortex — which controls executive functioning, including impulse control — in exactly the same way that cocaine does. Technology is so hyper-arousing that it raises dopamine levels — the feel-good neurotransmitter most involved in the addiction dynamic — as much as sex.
...I have found it easier to treat heroin and crystal meth addicts than lost-in-the-matrix video gamers or Facebook-dependent social media addicts.
There's even a smack at escapism:
We also know that kids are more prone to addictive escape if they feel alone, alienated, purposeless and bored. Thus the solution is often to help kids to connect to meaningful real-life experiences and flesh-and-blood relationships.
Interesting how the solution to a bad situation is... deeper connections to that situation.
There's also a class argument, emphasizing wealthy people. The author works in the Hamptons, and cites these people as parental authorities:
There’s a reason that the most tech-cautious parents are tech designers and engineers. Steve Jobs was a notoriously low-tech parent. Silicon Valley tech executives and engineers enroll their kids in no-tech Waldorf Schools. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to no-tech Montessori Schools, as did Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Short version: listen to the rich, who can help save your endangered children from drug dealers. Let's see if this combination of medicalization and class returns in the future as income inequality continues to grow.
(thanks to Brenda Landis!)
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