Think about how many times a person checks their phone. Maybe twenty, forty, or sixty? Triple that. According to research led by psychologists, “the average person checks their phone one-hundred and fifty times a day, which is about every six minutes” (Brody). This is becoming a developing habit in smartphone users, because of the way Silicon Valley employees are designing peoples’ smartphones and social media apps. Tristan Harris, a former Google product manager, said in an interview with 60 Minutes, that they are "programming them not to help people live their life, but are being designed because they are best at hooking people into using their products” (“Brain Hacking”). These designs are the characteristics that “shape peoples’ thoughts, feelings, and actions” that form the decisions they make everyday (Mccandless). Although technology may be making life easier with the unlimited amount of information and communication at everyones’  fingertips, it is causing a negative impact on people of all ages, especially children and college students growing up in this digital age.

The Digital Age, or information age, has created a lack of attention spans and a decline in deeper, emotional thinking due to the release of a “cyberspace that is devoid of immediate consequences and gives instant access to information without guidance” (Gregoire). The amount of information on the Internet is infinite, and is becoming effortless for people to find what they are looking for on Google. According to an article on Buzzle, the author, Manali Oak believes technology is “not a word, but a phenomenon” and with it comes “less risk, effort and mess.” In response to her beliefs, technology in this digital age may be requiring less effort to gather information, however it is also causing laziness and a worldwide problem in the health of smartphone users. Social media apps, like Snapchat and Facebook are being engineered to make people feel like they need technology to survive. For example, the continuous scroll on Facebook that makes people stay longer on the app, because they find something they were not looking for before, but now they are hooked. Or, how Snapchat created “snapchat streaks”, which is a design technique where users have a certain number of days tallied up next to the name of the person they have been snapchatting. Tristan Harris said in his 60 Minutes interview, that this design “causes actual anxiety in teens and adolescents and they will leave their usernames and passwords with five or six friends when they leave for vacation so they can keep their streaks for when they get back” (Mccandless). Technology has always been seen as neutral and "given the impression that it is up to us to determine how and when to use it, but due to the design of apps and the way they are being programmed to hook people on their product, that is not true anymore” (“Brain Hacking”). Silicon Valley does not want technology to be neutral, they have an ulterior motive now, which is to make more money and make it useful for long periods of time (Mccandless). Due to this motive, researchers have found that five to ten percent of technology users have gotten to the point where they are “unable to control how long they are online” (“5 Crazy Ways Social Media is Changing Your Brain Right Now”). Ramsay Brown, a specialist in brain hacking and co-founder of Dopamine Labs, found several tests that show anxiety levels when people are away from their phones for certain amounts of time and what the brain does when it vibrates or dings (Mccandless). Anderson Cooper, the interviewee for 60 Minutes tested this experiment out and said after the interview that he kept wanting to check his phone but he could not and that caused brief anxiety for him (“Brain Hacking”). This sudden increase in emotion and lack of control when your phone goes off is due to a new found chemical in the body, Dopamine.

Dopamine is a chemical that “acts as a messenger between brain cells”, and if used incorrectly it can lead to drug addiction, Parkinson’s Disease, etc. It contributes to making daily decisions, such as "what people eat, how people move, and how they learn" (Brookshire). However, Susan Greenfield, a researcher for lab studies on the brain found that social media and video gaming are triggering Dopamine in the same manner as junk food and ecstasy (Wisnioski). Furthermore, Nora Volkow, one of the world’s leading brain scientists, found that not only is technology rewiring brains but it is also rewiring the entire nervous system (Richtel). People are becoming self-centered and are not being as social in person, this is due to the Internet. In “an in-person conversation, thirty to forty percent of the time people talk about themselves, but online they spend about eighty percent of the time being self-involved by posting pics of one another and commenting about their lives (“5 Crazy Ways Social Media is Changing Your Brain Right Now”). There are infinite possibilities to why this is occurring to the body and brain, and the “constant bombarding of bells, chimes, and buzzes that alert one to messages and notifications people feel compelled to view and respond to immediately” are not helping dissolve the issue (Brody). 

A recent study within the past couple of years uncovered another reason this rewiring of the brain is happening: Phantom Vibration Syndrome, or when one thinks they heard their cellphone ring or buzz but it is just the brain playing a trick on them. Not many people know of this newfound discovery, or do not think anything of it, however it is increasingly becoming a larger problem, and more people are recognizing it. A few studies on the syndrome found “68 percent of the medical staff at a Massachusetts hospital, 89 percent of undergraduates at a midwestern university, and more than 90 percent of Taiwanese doctors-in-training in the middle of their internships” said that they had experienced these phantom vibrations at least once or twice (Miller). The vibrations study is not popular in older people, because they are not growing up in the Digital Age or dependent on their phones, computers, etc. but it is becoming popular in teenagers and adults, especially college students.

It is no shock that college students are experiencing phantom vibrations, dopamine rushes, and are forming addictions to their smartphones, because they are the “first generation to grow up with almost complete access to technology” (Dye). From the classroom, to the treadmill, to the comfort of their own bed, technology is everywhere. Tracy June Dye, a former college student at the University of South Carolina wrote her student theses, “The Effects of Technology on College Students” on the ways technology affects academics, health, and surprisingly, hookup culture. She found that most college students are losing their academic integrity because it is easier to cheat due to the amount of classwork, quizzes, and exams that are given online. This is most likely because with the “constant availability of smartphones, it limits the analytical and intuitiveness of people’s thinking and reasoning,” which goes hand in hand with the problem of physical and mental health that social media is causing (Gregoire). 

In the classroom, “students spend 106 minutes of their day on Facebook or other forms of social media” (Dye). Dr. Douglas Kendrick, a psychologist found that Facebook may be helping people stay in touch with close friends and family, but it is also causing a negative impact in people’s wellbeing and overall health (Kendrick). They “rely on their phones to regulate their emotional state, either to calm down or get an emotional boost” like a text, follow on Twitter, or a splurge of likes on Instagram (Miller). However, the negatives outweigh the positives in this situation, because people are “naturally engaging in social comparison while on social media,” which is where they think that someone else’s life is better than their own based on pictures and posts (Kendrick). According to Dye, social comparison is a major concern in college and has lead to depression and anxiety among students. There are two types of comparison: “upward social comparison, which is when one looks at someone more attractive or popular; and downward social comparison, which is when one looks at someone with lower grades or someone that is less attractive” (Dye). These mental health issues are transforming modern society into a dangerous place for “neurological development and personal relationships, but it is also causing physical health issues due to the lack of safety on roads and sidewalks” (Brody). Not only is social media affecting college students, but the multitasking aspect of balancing schoolwork along with a social life, both on and offline, is becoming a problem as well. 

There are many forms of multitasking: texting while driving, Netflix and homework, phone calls and answering emails, etc. They prevent a person from achieving the best they can do, because of the amount of distraction they all offer. Texting while driving was a problem a decade ago with the flip phone, but now with a handheld computer with endless information and notifications, it is a bigger problem than ever with “over 660,000 people on the road per day texting along with over eleven deaths per day because of it” (“Texting and Driving Accident Statistics”). Watching Netflix while doing homework can limit one’s ability to do their best and balancing phone calls and emails can make people miss something important like a deadline or a “$1.3 million offer to buy an Internet start-up company, like Mr. Kord Campbell” (Richtel).

AsapSCIENCE’s video showed that a person who multitasks actually performs much worse than a person who does one thing at a time, and they start to form a habit of not remembering what they were doing or what they were supposed to do (“5 Crazy Ways Social Media is Changing Your Brain Right Now”). This is due to the excessive bursts of information like “emails, phone calls, and other information that handling at the same time can easily change how people think and behave” (Richtel). Smartphones have made balancing these forms of communicating easier and more portable, however “research has shown that this can impair attention, productivity and memory, dampen creative thinking, increase stress levels, reduce sleep quality, and lead to cognitive errors, like walking into people or forgetting a meeting” (Gregoire). Based on this research, if people do not start to take steps one at a time, balance out their schedules, and declutter their emails and desks, then these problems are only going to get worse along with more people having health issues, memory loss, and unfortunately, laziness. 

Children are the future of this generation and are the ones who will be running the country in several years. It is vital that their brains are not altered or rewired to become addicted and dependent on smartphones, Netflix, and social media, like the people already in this Digital Age that are only a decade or two older than they are. Same as college students, children are surrounded with technology at home, school, etc. and it is beginning to affect their learning, behavior, and development of their brains. Before the world was dependent on technology, children used to be active and healthy by riding bikes, swimming, playing outside, playing sports, etc. but that is not a common activity anymore with kids in the Information Age. Now, elementary kids “rely on technology for the majority of their play and use on average seven and a half hours per day of entertainment technology, seventy-five percent of these children have TV’s in their bedrooms, and fifty percent of North American homes have the TV on all day” (Rowan). There needs to be a way that technology can transform from off the screen and make kids interested in going outside. Right now, the cognitive development of children’s brains is not based on what they learn in school from hands-on learning, but is based on the questions of “what type of technology is being used, how much is consumed, and for how long it is being consumed” (Bavelier). Media and television shows are starting to create a link with the reduction of children’s language skills. However, television is trying to change this through “direct participation from the child to provide a strong language model, and avoid overloading the child with distracting stimulation with a well-articulated narrative structure (Bavelier). They need this structural language to “coordinate neuronal assemblies in the brain which work in harmony with efficiency and stability as they emerge from adolescence” (Gregoire). To ensure children’s minds develop correctly, the supply of iPads, iPods, iPhones, etc. in school should not be given to kids until they are older and responsible enough to use it the right way and for its correct purpose. This is a great way to limit the screen time for children and cause more time for the outdoors and allow room for creativity. This will create a safer, smarter generation full of creativity and bursts of imagination.

Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco said that “the nonstop interactivity of technology is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment.” There is “three times the amount of information now than there was in 1960,” and that is a scary thought, because no one can interpret or control that much information because people “were not evolved to do that” (Richtel). The future of the Digital Age may seem unclear and difficult to change, but there are ways to rewire peoples’ brains for the better and make information available in a healthier, more beneficial way. In the article, “Hooked On Our Smartphones”, the author talks about Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the mega-hit, Hamilton, and how he “found his creativeness for the play, and just his ideas in general in 'the moment of rest.’” Nancy Colier’s book, The Power of Off discusses that “the promise of technology is the fact it will make our lives easier; yet to realize that promise, we cannot be passive users--we must bring awareness and mindfulness to our relationships with our devices” (Colier). 

More people need to start speaking out like Tristan Harris, Ramsay Brown, and Nancy Colier, because Silicon Valley employees are going to continue to engineer people’s phones, laptops, and social media apps until academic integrity and mental and physical health issues are not the only problems and it is too late to change the digital age for the better. So, put down the smartphone, get rid of the Snapchat streaks, limit screen time and spend time with a family member or hike, play a sport, play a board game, etc. If people start balancing their lives like this, they will have the secret to a healthy body, mind, and relationship with people, their smartphone, and will make a better future.
