i-Minds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming, and Social Media are Changing our Brains, our Behavior, and the Evolution of our Species - Softcover

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Dr. Mari Swingle is a psychoneurophysiologist and learning and behavioral specialist who practices with the highly-regarded Swingle Clinic, which she co-founded with her father, Dr. Paul Swingle, who is considered to be one of the founding fathers of Clinical Psychoneurophysiology. She holds a BA in Visual Arts, an MA in Language Education, and a MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology.

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Constant connectivity is rewiring our brains ― this is your survival guide for the digital era

"[Swingle's] practical advice guides us to become masters, not servants, of the technology we are bequeathing to our children."
― DR. GABOR MATÉ, M.D., co-author, Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers

"An eye-opener. This book left me speechless." ― ROB KALL, host, Bottom Up Radio, publisher, OpEdNews

MANY OF US would no more go out without our cell phone than we would leave the house without clothes. We live our lives on social media, and PDAs, tablets, computers and other devices are completely integrated into our global culture. From connectedness to accessibility and instant access to information, a wealth of benefits accompanies this digital revolution. But what about the cost?

In i-Minds , author Dr. Mari Swingle explores the pervasive influence of i-technology, demonstrating:

• How constant connectivity is rapidly changing our brains
• What dangers are posed to children and adults alike in this brave new world
• The positive steps we can take to embrace new technology while protecting our well-being and steering our future in a more human direction.

Engaging and entertaining yet scientifically rigorous, this extraordinary book is an indispensable look at a revolution where the only constant is change―food for thought about which aspects of technology we should embrace, what we should unequivocally reject, and the many facets of the digital era that we should now be debating.

"A must-read to understand the impact of our digital revolution and how to use it wisely." ― ERIK PEPER, PhD, Professor, San Francisco State University and President, Biofeedback Federation of Europe

DR. MARI SWINGLE is a Neurotherapist and behavioral specialist who practices at the highly-regarded Swingle Clinic. She holds a BA in Visual Arts, an MA in Language Education, and a MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology, and has won the prestigious FABBS Early Career Impact Award for her contribution to Brain and Behavioural Sciences.

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Introduction

Societal Shifting
Every era has an innovation that changes the face of society: the way we think, the way we act and interact as individuals, as a community, and as a culture. As the innovation is introduced, it tends to be greeted with elation. As the innovation becomes integrated and the first societal shifts become apparent, some start to question the balance of benefit and loss in the equation of change. We are now in such a place with digital media.

Cell phones, PCs, and the Internet are now completely integrated in global culture, i-culture: welcomed by most, resisted by some, the impact apparent for all. There is great change for the better, but now, a few decades into the assimilation, there is also arguably evidence of an equally negative impact. The darker side of the digital era has emerged. Be it due to naïveté or denial, the negative influences of digital media are expanding, blindly accepted by most ― educators, business, parents, and partners, who later wonder what went terribly wrong. This book will explore such changes and hopefully provide food for thought on what we should embrace and accept, what we should unequivocally reject, and what aspects of the digital era we should now be debating.

The debate, unfortunately, often gets sidetracked into generational arguments ― a generational divide wherein the older complain of the younger becoming progressively stupid, rude, and isolating with i-tech at the expense of interpersonal or face-to-face relationships. The young, like any generation before, equally find their pre–i-tech elders ignorant of advancement, judgmental, invasive, and abrasive in their views, feeling they should stop pontificating and get with the times. But we are all missing the point. By sticking staunchly to our positions, we risk missing the fine print: the subtle and not-so-subtle changes in human behavior and underlying brain function that are unequivocally changing all that we are, and the world that we live in. Here we all owe it to ourselves, and the generations that will follow, to open our eyes, look up, and examine change in action, to arm ourselves with information on who we are, and what we wish to become in this new, and yes,wonderful, i-mediated world. ...and now the dark side.

First Hints of a Problem
Over the past two decades, a select group of scholars and health care practitioners began to systematically note the emergence of a new set of issues seemingly associated with excessive usage and otherwise unhealthy applications of i-technologies. Today the effects are confirmed, notably in the realms of sexuality, socialization, education, and failure to launch. For children, adolescents, and youth, excessive usage of digital media is now highly associated with learning disabilities, emotional dysregulation, as well as conduct or behavioral disorders. For adults, it is highly correlated with anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction and sexual deviation, insomnia, social isolation, disaffected pair bonding, marital conflict, and compromised work performance. In clinical practice, I am also starting to note some rather frightening connections with thwarted emotional and cognitive development in the very young.

Opening Our Eyes
I would like to think we are wiser now as a global culture, having learned from past mistakes, that we no longer blindly continue on paths of innovation without looking up to examine the potential toll. My last eighteen years working in a clinical environment, however, are telling me otherwise. Unlike excessive consumption or abuse of other substances such as alcohol, food, or drugs, for many, the effects of excessive usage of digital media are rarely perceived as contributing to, never mind as causing, a specific ailment, condition, or conflict. All this said, digital media is here to stay and has unquestionably advanced our world. It is not negative by nature. This is not the claim that this book will make; not by far. But what the Internet and all digital media give, they can also take away. How we use it, interact with it, and depend on it vis-à-vis our "real" world and real relationshipswithin are key.

The questions we now need to start asking ourselves are not what the technologies are positively contributing, as these contributions are rather evident, but rather what the technologies are replacing or taking away: an older technology, a behavior, a skill, a relationship, our compassion, values...intelligence? It is time to widen our focus to the broader effects of i-technology in all the branches of our day-to-day lives. It is time to ask ourselves what i-media is truly facilitating.

In This Book
This book is written from a therapist's perspective. As a practicing clinician, I have based i-Minds upon what has passed my clinical floor: how i-media is affecting children, partners, family, learning. The list is long.

Weaving through larger societal shifts, including history, research and hard data, developmental theory, literature on brain function and mental illness, professional reflections, popular literature, and observations from clinical practice, I will illustrate how the medium is influencing our thinking and our processing ― our functioning as a whole. I will look at microcultures, such as high school and bullying, parenting circles, and dating, as well as shifts in macroculture affecting work, sexuality, mental health, learning, play, creative process, attachment, and development itself. I will explore the increase in apathy and general hyperarousal in the masses associated with excessive applications of i-tech. I will also explore the extreme: a new and growing phenomenon threatening to become the addiction of the twenty-first century, referred to as Internet addiction (IA), digital addiction, or i-addiction. The i-phenomenon will be explored in tandem from three distinct angles.

• First, I will explore the big picture of what is affecting us all, regardless of age, gender, culture, or creed.
• I will also present what appears to be generation specific ― not exclusively by chronological age itself, but rather by age as it relates to the rate of the assimilation of the technologies.
• Lastly, I will discuss the effects of digital media in terms of level of immersion: the way, or more specifically the "why" and the "how," some of us are using the medium to the inclusion or exclusion of other activities or relationships.

For those of you who are more scientifically or research oriented, supplemental details are presented in sections labeled Scientific Corner. For those of you who are not, these sections can be skipped without losing the general flow. Definitions of some potentially unfamiliar terms and key points will also be included within the text in italics.

Interspersed throughout, I will sprinkle advice: solutions, options, and actions one can choose to follow if situations and vignettes seem all too familiar. My goal is to educate, to ensure that i-tech remains a solid complement to all that we are, integrated with but not overriding the human element in cognition and development, work, industry, education, socialization, and play.

Great Beginnings

Subtle Shifts in Behavior - But first, how did this all start?
The World Wide Web, as we first called it, was a military innovation that, when it crossed over into civilian life, was embraced as changing the world only for the better. Indeed, in its beginnings, it was most positive. First gaining a foothold in academic communities in the early 1990s, the Internet was the ideal tool for research and learning.1 Soon, no more restrictions on library hours, no more trudging across campus only to find someone else had reserved the book or article you...