The excessive use of digital technology especially affects young people.

Attention and emotional and social intelligence can be altered by excessive digital technology use.

Later in life, technology can be associated with enhanced decision-making, reasoning, and visual processing.

This happened to me a few days ago. I am talking to a Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) on the phone about a trip we were planning. She seemed fragmented, texting her parents while speaking with me, and crafting decorations for a party for 20 people that she was giving in a few hours.

My gosh! How could she keep it going? The answer apparently is that she is young, a Gen Z. Her brain can’t do anything else.

This is why. Frequent use of digital technologies (smartphones, computers, video games, and ubiquitous online interfaces) can have profound effects on the human brain (Small et. al., 2020). From this perspective, the relevance of technology lies in how it engages neural circuits, exhausts or enhances cognitive systems, and potentially restructures brain development across the lifespan.

Attention and Technology Use

One of the most striking neuropsychological issues raised in this article relates to the relationship between screen time and attentional control. The authors summarize evidence that extensive digital media use correlates with heightened symptoms akin to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including distractibility and impaired sustained attention. This finding aligns with what we know about the executive control network (a constellation of frontal and parietal regions) responsible for attentional control, task switching, and cognitive inhibition.

To explain, when individuals........

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