High levels of Internet use may change the brain in a waywhich could affect our attention, memory and social interactions, according toa study.
The research, published in the journal World Psychiatry,found the Internet can produce both acute and sustained alterations in specificareas of cognition, which may reflect changes in the brain.
Researchers investigated leading hypotheses on how theInternet may alter cognitive processes, and further examined the extent towhich these hypotheses were supported by recent findings from psychological,psychiatric and neuroimaging research.
“The key findings of this report are that high-levelsof Internet use could indeed impact many functions of the brain,” saidJoseph Firth, from the Western Sydney University in Australia.
“For example, the limitless stream of prompts andnotifications from the Internet encourages us towards constantly holding adivided attention — which then in turn may decrease our capacity formaintaining concentration on a single task,” said Firth.
“Additionally, the online world now presents us with auniquely large and constantly-accessible resource for facts and information,which is never more than a few taps and swipes away,” he said.
“Given we now have most of the world’s factualinformation literally at our fingertips, this appears to have the potential tobegin changing the ways in which we store, and even value, facts and knowledgein society, and in the brain,” said Firth.
The widespread adoption of these online technologies, alongwith social media, is also of concern to some teachers and parents, researcherssaid.
The World Health Organization’s 2018 guidelines recommendedthat young children (aged 2-5) should be exposed to one hour per day, or less,of screen time.
However, the report also found that the vast majority ofresearch examining the effects of the Internet on the brain has been conductedin adults.
More research is needed to determine the benefits anddrawbacks of Internet use in young people, according to researchers fromWestern Sydney University, Harvard University in the US, and Kings College,Oxford University and University of Manchester in the UK.
Firth said although more research is needed, avoiding thepotential negative effects could be as simple as ensuring that children are notmissing out on other crucial developmental activities, such as socialinteraction and exercise, by spending too much time on digital devices.
“To help with this, there are also now a multitude ofapps and software programmes available for restricting Internet usage andaccess on smartphones and computers — which parents and carers can use toplace some ‘family-friendly’ rules around both the time spent on personaldevices, and also the types of content engaged with,” he said.
“Speaking to children often about how their onlinelives affect them is also important — to hopefully identify children at riskof cyberbullying, addictive behaviours, or even exploitation — and so enablingtimely intervention to avoid adverse outcomes,” said Firth.
The bombardment of stimuli via the Internet, and theresultant divided attention commonly experienced, presents a range of concerns,said Professor Jerome Sarris, from the Western Sydney University.
“I believe that this, along with the increasing#Instagramification of society, has the ability to alter both the structure andfunctioning of the brain, while potentially also altering our socialfabric,” Sarris said.