A father works from home.
Illustration -
Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / SIPA
In
La Fabrique du crétin digital
published in 2019, Michel Desmurget highlighted the dangers of screens for children's brains.
In this period of widespread teleworking, risks also exist among adults.
Are we becoming “digital morons”.
The INSERM neuroscience research director helps us answer this question.
Are we becoming (digital) morons?
Since the first confinement in March, a large part of the French population has started working from home, chaining meetings on Zoom or Google Meet and gradually losing the sense of physical interactions.
Besides back pain and the risk of burn-out, what are the consequences of these exchanges by screens interposed on our brain?
In 2019, Michel Desmurget, author of
La Fabrique du crétin digital
(Seuil), revealed the dangers of digital consumption on the brains of our children.
But what about the adult brain that has traded in colleagues for a bright screen?
The director of neuroscience research at INSERM explores with
20 minutes
the risks of new constraints linked to the Covid-19 crisis.
You have warned about the harmful effects of screens for children's brains, what about adults?
A human on a screen and a human present are not the same thing at all.
Our brain does not see it the same.
When a human is left out of the group, the areas that activate in the brain are, in large part, the same areas as those of physical pain.
We are very dependent on humans for our mental and emotional balance.
We need real relationships with real people.
What confinement shows us is not that it is extraordinary to do teleconferences, it is the limits of the exercise.
If there is an explosion of mental disorders among people, it is not just because they are forced to stay at home, it is because they are deprived of human contact.
By removing the human, we create significant stress for the brain and for the individual.
"That the screens participate through the reduction of our capacities of reflection, of general culture, in making us permeable to conspiracy theories, that seems clear"
Since the start of the pandemic, a large part of the population has interacted through screens, what problems does this pose?
The cerebral response is less intense.
You pay less attention.
Our brains have been formatted through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to pay attention to the important things.
We only deal with what seems relevant to us and what we have learned during evolution is that humans are not only important, but also vital.
Our brains have learned to pay special attention to humans.
If you see a human through a screen, it's not the same brain engagement.
You can make an effort, but it is more tiring.
The face through the screen could be misleading ...
It is not the same finesse.
It is not in 3D, it has no smell.
You can only see part of the body.
A whole lot of information is missing, and again, due to less brain engagement, the cognitive load needed to process the interaction is increased.
Since the beginning of this crisis, we have observed a rise in adherence to conspiracy theories, is this a symptom of “digital crétinerie”, in reference to your book “La fabrique du crétin digital”?
I believe it is a multiple symptom.
There are a number of things that allow us to face these conspiracy theories and figure things out.
There is indeed education, language, and what the English call
background knowledge
, basic knowledge.
All the knowledge that allows us to understand the world.
There is a marked decline in the competence of the younger generations in this area.
A Stanford University study looked at the abilities of young people to understand information they find on the Internet.
According to this study, young people were able to navigate between Facebook, Twitter and Instagram without difficulty, but their capacities to process information, to sort the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish fake news from reliable information, were so weak that this constituted a "threat to democracy".
By losing a certain general culture, by losing a certain richness of language and by losing a certain access to information, one becomes more permeable to these theories.
Previously, most of our knowledge of the world, of our thinking ability, came from reading.
That the screens participate through the reduction of our capacities of reflection, of general culture, in making us permeable to conspiracy theories, it seems clear.
In the long term, what can teleworking have as a consequence?
The consequence that we are starting to see on our psychic, mental and emotional balance.
It creates anxiety, tension.
Converging studies show that there are beginning to be significant effects linked to this loneliness, including for people confined in family.
As soon as people are less well in their heads, they will start working less well.
That does not mean that we must eliminate teleworking completely and that we cannot move towards a dose of telework that is a relevant balance.
There, we are deprived of all human contact.
We know that work is an important place of social interaction.
The only thing we know for sure is that at the current level, it is harmful.
"The current attentional problems in the population are massive in children and teenagers but also affect a part of the adult population"
You say that multitasking “deconstructs attention”, and teleworking tends to accelerate the tendency to multi tasking… Can adults lose the intellectual capacities they have acquired?
Structures and functions that are not in use tend to sag.
It is as if you were asking me: can an athlete who does not move any more lose certain physical capacities?
I want to answer yes.
The loss is undoubtedly less dramatic than the absence of construction which one could have in the child.
A study shows that current attentional problems in the population are massive in children and adolescents but also affect a part of the adult population.
Multitasking is about training the system to be constantly attentive to what is going on in the outside world.
You are going to substitute one attentional type for the other.
This ability to concentrate, to close yourself off from the world, you are going to replace it with an ability where you are constantly listening to the world, to noise.
We know that multitasking has extremely negative effects on attention in children but also in adults.
Even people who have been solidly structured can experience problems with too much use of screens.
Does it only have an effect on attention?
We know that a fundamental impact of screens is sleep.
When you touch sleep, you touch everything that goes with it: memorization, cognitive activity, attention, obesity… There are direct factors, like multitasking on attention, and indirect factors, like sleep.
In adults, we know that there is a direct link between the consumption of screens and the emergence of Alzheimer's disease.
This is not by chance because we know, for example, that Alzheimer's disease is deeply dependent on physical inactivity, obesity, and smoking level.
It depends on a number of risk factors which are all set in motion by screens.
There are problems with senescence in adults.
Sedentary lifestyle is the next big public health scandal with screens.
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