Skärmhjärnan

About the book

Book author: Anders Hansen

The book is about how our brains are not designed for our modern life, at all. . Dr Hansen is a Swedish psychiatrist and tells us about screens, mobile phones, brain science and psychology.

Among other things, we learn why we:

• have a harder time focusing on average
• sleep less on average
• spend less time with friends on average
• how we are more jealous of others on average

Reflection and takeaways

I love how the book started, with this visualization:

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This is 10,000 dots. Let one dot (.) represent 1 generation since Homo Sapiens Sapiens appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago. All the dots then represents humanity’s modern history.

Now, how many generations have had elecitricity, running water and cars?

That would be 8 dots, or ........

And computers, cellphones and air travel?

3 dots, ...

How many have never experienced a world with smartphones, Facebook and internet?

1 dot, or .

Fascinating, and I like this representation because it also works in a hardcopy book. We are simply not designed for this new age, but hopefully we can adapt.

I’m very interested in this topic and have been for a long time. I don’t regret reading it but I didn’t really uncover new information (to me). I will list it here anyway, mostly for me but maybe for you.

Personally, I think the battle for our focus is the greatest war of our time. Every time you open your phone you are alone, fighting against millions of behavioural scientists, statisticians and artificial intelligence researchers for your attention. I am not surprised it can be hard to put your phone down sometimes.

The most interesting book takeaways (favourite - but it sounds so strange to say in this context because they are pretty dark):

1. We are designed to survive in the wilderness, not to survive and be happy. Being happy is a secondary goal. It makes sense to be anxious, because that noise in the dark sounding from the bush can be a predator and the only survival strategy that makes sense is better safe than sorry. If you aren’t afraid of what could be bad news hiding the bush you will end up as a late night snack. But now that bush-lion is a late night email. This turns on stress responses without a real enemy and way to flee. Moreover, it is turned on for a longer time, and it’s not designed for that. Check out the HPA axis.

2. Your phone is designed to be addictive and release dopamine. We reach for it as soon as we wake up and it is usually the last item we touch before we fall asleep. Dopamine is released when we learn new information and maybes such as maybe I have a new email. We also get a lot of dopamine from social validation, so social medias are very addictive.

3. When we multitask, your actual performance turns into shit, but not your perception of your performance. It’s so bad memories don’t even form right.

4. The mere presence or visibility of phone is harmful for performance and focus. By a lot. And never bring it out when socializing.

5. Sleep is extremely important for the brain, because it removes a lot of “brain waste” and forms long term memories. If it wasn’t crucial the need for sleep would have been the first thing evolution optimized away. Almost all screens affect sleep negatively, and blue light is even worse.

6. Social medias turn people more depressed (duh), and actually more lonely too, counter-intuitive to the name.

7. Serotonin is a really crazy neurotransmitter. As with any “alpha” stuff, it can’t be discussed without sounding cheesy. Here goes. It affects monkeys in the following way w.r.t their social hierarchy: if the alpha monkey lost its position, its serotonin levels dropped severely, while the new alpha monkeys serotonin levels rose significantly. This causes the former alpha to withdraw – likely because the former alpha monkey should avoid conflict for a while to recover its strength. The new alpha rejoices because all this new serotonin makes it feel really good, and so it starts to act more alpha in its social status. When monkeys were fed antidepressants, they could cheat this process. I wonder how different humans really are. Serotonin has been known to affect calmness, harmony and inner strength.

8. We compete in everything: the math test, what car you have, how much you run et cetera. Suddenly the arena is infinitely huge because everyone broadcasts all the wins on social media, never the losses, likely causing your serotonin levels to drop via the process above. We inherit this from a period when competing used to be within your little hunter-gatherer tribe, not the entire world.

9. Kids are clearly not having a good time using their phones, but can’t stop. Especially teen girls. Mood disorders are more common, attention disorders are more common and self-harm is more common. This is the one dot (.) generation, don’t forget. Phones distract them in school, and they sleep worse. I can’t help but having the thought “I am glad I am not a teenager today” and that selfish thought is pretty disturbing.

10. 1 out of 9 adults in Sweden are taking antidepressants. That’s very sad. I almost can’t believe it. It’s a hidden epidemic.

11. Exercise is awesome for almost everything. Health, longevity, stress reduction, happiness and sleep, so do that to mitigate some of these harms. Don’t use your phone in social contexts, and be aware of the effect it has on your health and focus.

It’s not so relevant to the above points, but I thought this was super interesting: many skeletons from hunter-gatherer times that have been dug up have severe trauma on the left sides of their head. Why? Because they got hit in the head by someone using their right hand. Scientists believe 10-15% of all hunter-gatherer deaths were caused by beatdowns by other people.

Overall, pretty dark stuff, but it helps to be aware. I have a biased opinion about the content too, it’s like an echo chamber for me. I don’t use social medias, I never use my phone when socializing, I exercise almost every day, I sleep well, and have kept up all these habits for years. It works for me and I am very happy in general.

Why did I pick it

I saw it being talked about somewhere online.

Verdict

3.⁵⁄₅. It is a good book for the layperson. I’m very interested in this topic. I liked Stolen Focus better.