This is a comment via email and my response. Dear Colin,
Declining memory is a good thing in some ways. We need no longer try to remember addresses and telephone numbers if we can record them in a file called “Address List” in our personal computers. That reduces mental “clutter”---I suppose. But it is not a theorem that each additional item we remember displaces another memory as one of my bridge friends alleged. Perhaps it’s exactly the opposite.
For example, as I pass through my 80s, my memory fails me more often. A couple of years ago, I had trouble remembering the names of the couple who lived her door to my girlfriend, a very nice man and woman. My memory failure troubled me. It took me a day and a half to have the names come to me---through association with something else.
“Who were the centers for the Boston Celtics when they were among the best basketball teams?” Bill Russell. Then Dave Cowens. Then Robert Parrish. Ah, that’s it! Lloyd Parrish.
“What are some of the forts in the United States?” Fort Bragg. Ah, that’s it! Karen Bragg!
But in most ways, the declining memory that comes with aging is a bad thing. 75 years ago, when I was at my peak in chess, I could rely on the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense. 60 years ago, when I played my last competitive chess (as an emergency substitute for the fourth board of Lina Grumette’s team that had a match against the team of Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena), the rust had already settled in and I had to wing it. Lina played first board, Irving Rivise played second board and I do not remember the name of the third board, but the fourth board was “Tigran Petrosian” (can you guess why?) … who should have been playing first board.
In my 70s, I could still solve the chess problems posted in the back room of the bridge club that was sublet to a chess club. Now, in my late 80s, I can solve some chess problems I somehow see posted on the internet but I must abandon my efforts to solve others as too time-consuming to undertake. I believe that memory is involved in a roundabout way. As I think of what move to play at the second turn, I must work hard to keep in mind the changes in the position my first move and the opponent’s reply produced.
My arithmetical abilities faded dramatically about 35 years ago. Until then, I wondered why world-class backgammon players (I had become good but not world-class) consulted me to solve problems in non-contact bearoff positions: Good enough to redouble? Good enough to take? No insights involved, just do the math. I could do the math by writing down products and quotients on a sheet of paper. In my early 50s, I found myself unable to do so reliably without writing down the intermediate steps that were taught in grade school, as I could no longer just “see” the products and quotients. Memory? Probably. I could no longer remember the “carries” without writing them down.
Perhaps the only mental ability that remains intact for me at age 88 is imagination. Two days ago I posed a problem to one of my contemporaries at the local bridge club, Tony, an author of one or two bridge books (that I haven’t read). In bridge, there are many principles called “Rules” and “Laws” by the experts who proposed them. I mentioned a few of them.
Ely Culbertson’s “Rule of 2 and 3.” Don Pearson’s “Rule of 15.” Marty Bergen’s “Rule of 20.”
A few of my “rules” of which I’m sure Tony never heard (my ideas get very little publicity):
The Rule of 25. The Rule of 19. The Rule of 3/8ths. The Rule of -1. Yes, I discriminate neither against fractions nor against negative numbers.
What all these rules have in common is that not everyone will agree with them. I dissent with the three cited first. Others may disagree with the four of my own rules. If somebody disagrees with me, I can only say, “You may be right.” Perhaps some other fraction would be more accurate than 3/8ths. Perhaps a “Rule of 18” would be better than my Rule of 19. Perhaps a Rule of 24.7 would be better than the Rule of 25.
I challenged Tony to find a well-known “rule” in bridge that is taught in many bridge books from which nobody can dissent and asked him not to answer quickly but to ponder it at leisure and “sleep on it” (a better way to fall asleep than “counting sheep”). Perhaps I shall encounter Tony at the club today or tomorrow and he will have thought of it.
Currently I am co-authoring a bridge book with a contemporary (Jim) at the other end of the continent. In the last four or five years, I’ve co-authored nine other bridge books with Jim and edited several others with him (our usual procedure is that he asks me to edit, and when he sees my first few rewrites of his bridge deals asks me to co-author). Jim, a golfer, has often written deals up where the declarer plays against the Devil, and fails. I edited Jim’s use of “the Devil” by calling him “Lucifer M. Mephistopheles,” a more respectful name. The merciful Mr. Mephistopheles offers the declarer a “Mulligan” (a golf term meaning a do-over): replay the deal, “but if you fail again, I’ll take your soul.”
I’ll give you a hint at the problem I posed to Tony. The “Rule” from which nobody can dissent is actually a theorem. So I thought to include in the book I am currently writing with Jim a dialogue in which Mr. Mephistopheles plays the role of … (did you guess?) Devil’s Advocate and rejects the Rule that is a theorem. I had to argue with Jim to leave this passage in.
Now I’ll tease you: could the Devil be right to reject the Rule that is a theorem?
In the dialogue Lucifer M. Mephistopheles opposes his (fraternal) twin brother, Srini R. Mathestopheles who offers a proof of the theorem. And yes, the Devil is right … for two reasons I invite you to guess. [You’re welcome to seek help from any Polish bridge expert you know.] I wonder if I would have thought to include this dialogue half a century ago when I was at my peak as a bridge player. Might some of the changes that age has snowed on me be improvements?
[Oops, the artificial intelligence embedded in this email server---Microsoft Outlook---just underlined the word “snowed” in the sentence above as though it were an error, but surely you can see why it isn’t.]
Yours,
Danny
Dear Danny
Thank you for this incredible comment. It's a profound, personal, and deeply moving reflection. That is quite a vital distinction between the "declining memory" that is a feature of a long and complex life, and the one I am trying to describe in the substack post, a systemic, artificial hollowing-out of the young.
What I find so powerful in your stories is that they describe a mind that is adapting, not just failing. Your anecdote about finding your neighbors' names is a perfect illustration. It's not a simple file-pull. It's an act of associative triumph. It's the journey through the Celtics' centers that proves the mind is still a vast, interconnected web, not a simple database.
But the connection you make, the one that strikes me as most chillingly relevant to the Wong study, is about chess and arithmetic. You describe no longer being able to "see" the products or hold the board state in your head. That isn't just recall; it's working space. It's the mental RAM. That is the very "serious difficulty concentrating" that the young are now reporting.
The horror of the study is that you are describing this at the end of 88 magnificent years, and they are describing it at the beginning.
And yet, your most brilliant point is the one you save for last. The idea that as these procedural faculties have become more effortful, your imagination has not just remained intact, but has sharpened. This is extraordinary. The "Rule of -1," the glorious "Lucifer M. Mephistopheles" versus "Srini R. Mathestopheles"... this is cognition at its highest, most human, and most playful. It suggests that wisdom isn't about memory; it's about the creative power that blossoms in the space that rote calculation once occupied.
As for your magnificent challenge... how can the Devil be right to reject a theorem? My only guess is that a theorem is only as true as its axioms, and perhaps Mr. Mephistopheles (with help from a Polish expert, no doubt) objects to the axioms themselves. Perhaps the "Rule" is proven in a vacuum, but the Devil, who plays at the table, knows that the vacuum doesn't exist.
Thank you for this. "Snowed" is, as you noted, precisely the right word.
Life lived in a “snow globe” comes to mind as invisible boundaries that are unseen, but omnipresent. The snow blurs surroundings, perceptions, just enough to allow movement, or agency, but with no clear distant vision. The illusion of limitlessness ensconced in the “snow globe” of one’s prescience parametered.
Congratulations to your friend’s 88 years well lived.
The "snow globe" is a hauntingly accurate extension of Danny's metaphor. It captures the essence of a mind that is still active, shaking the glass to watch the flakes swirl, but is fundamentally enclosed.
Your point about the "illusion of limitlessness" is particularly sharp. Within the globe, everything seems possible, yet the "prescience parameters" are fixed. It describes a form of cognitive agency that has lost its horizon. For the young people in the Wong study, the digital feed is their snow globe. It offers an infinite scroll that creates the sensation of vastness, while actually narrowing their perception to a blur of the immediate present.
Danny’s 88 years represent a mind that was formed in the clear air before the storm. Even as the "snow" of age settles, he still knows what the landscape looks like without it. The tragedy for the digital natives is that they were born inside the glass. They have no memory of a distant vision to compare to the blur.
Thanks for writing about this study. The results of are even worse than I had guessed and so important. As you say, the problem of cognitive deskilling should be discussed urgently and with compassion. Mindfulness is needed for memory, and a pure record is not the same as having a memory.
Thank you for this, you have given the problem its proper name: "cognitive deskilling." It's a term that deserves to be front and center.
Your point about the "pure record" versus "having a memory" is the perfect summary of the crisis. One is a dead file; the other is a living, human process. I'm glad this piece caught your eye, and I appreciate you adding such a sharp and vital point to the discussion. Mindfulness is an intention I set daily, you are right it is an essential skill.
Interesting comments. A friend’s daughter is committed to riding horses. Her first serious accident was without a cell phone. Her second while wearing an Apple Watch probably saved her life as it was extremely serious. The pros and cons vary and when possible to assess risk is a necessary decision.
In an era where devices are being proposed to acquire an "absolute memory," which implies absolute stupidity like that in Jorge Luis Borges's story: "Funes the Memorious," other devices silently impose on us another form of acquired stupidity, a declining memory and an impossible thought. Thank you for your brilliant articles.
Thank you Daniel. We are caught between two equally sterile versions of "impossible thought."
On one hand, the Funes-like promise of "absolute memory", a digital recall so perfect that it, like his, is a form of paralysis. A mind that cannot forget, cannot abstract, cannot think.
On the other, the "acquired stupidity" you so rightly name: the silent, systemic atrophy imposed by our devices, where we don't even get the perfect record, we just get the "declining memory."
We are building Funes's library, but in the process, we are becoming his precise opposite. Not the man who can't forget, but the civilization that can't remember.
Thank you for this perfect, and perfectly dark, insight.
Colin, this was a distressing post to read, even though, within our field, we have abundant anecdotal evidence to confirm this cognitive disability in students.
I agree that even if "people might not be more willing to self -report it; they are less able to conceal it." It is glaringly obvious when one speaks with them.This cognitive disability affects their personal and work lives, but it is even more so a primacy concern for democracy. Democracy has always required informed citizens, citizens that can understand beyond the first order outcome to the third order outcomes of each policy, and to analyze which is better for their country at the moment. Even more so, their ability to articulate outrage when the policy harm citizens and to dialogue with government is paramount to democracy, for it forestalls tyranny.
I've noted before that schools are not nurturing a well-educated student. If we add to their lack of substantive knowledge this inability to concentrate and remember, well, even IF they were taught it, how will they even be aware of how to use it?
Colin, those under 18 are already being told what the past is and they believe it, even as I attempt to teach them otherwise. It is part of the ongoing cognitive warfare battle that is increasingly aided by this cognitive disability.
After reading the paper, I suggest that the self-reporting of cognitive disability fails to reveals the true extend of the rise since 2013. We need a more objective test. As well, at the upper end of those years, many would be unaware of their loss, as they would begin with less well-developed cognitive skills.
I truly dread to consider the impact on the cognitive disability of this current generation, the 2-18 year olds now, when they are tested in even five years. It is one reason I question the self-reporting. If you have never been exposed to what we call a classical education, or been trained to engage with material until it makes sense to you, without any AI help, how would you even know what being cognitive ability is ?
Your compelling imagery created "that "to name 'reliance on technology' as a risk factor is like diagnosing “submersion” in a drowning victim," is precisely the point, isn't it ? People are being drown through submersion in technological reliance, only they don't feel their suffocation, they are lulled into unawareness of all they are losing.
Thank you Wendy. This report from the front lines of education is precisely the validation that makes this "distressing." You are seeing the "abundant anecdotal evidence" in real-time.
I believe that you have correctly identified the true, catastrophic stake: this is a civilizational crisis, not just a personal one. The cognitive faculties we are discussing are not a luxury for a "classical education"; they are the non-negotiable prerequisite for a republic a State. A citizenry that cannot follow an argument to its "third-order outcomes" is a citizenry that will, without fail, vote for its own dissolution.
Your confirmation that students "are already being told what the past is and they believe it" is the most chilling part. It means the "cognitive warfare" is not a future threat; it's a present-tense, mop-up operation which we must take on vigorously.
But your most devastating insight, and one I am now turning over in my own mind, is your critique of the study's methodology. You are absolutely right. The self-reporting must be a vast undercount.
Your question is the one that exposes the true depth of the problem: "how would you even know what being cognitive ability is?"
People cannot self-report the loss of a faculty you were never trained to possess. We cannot feel the loss of a "classical" baseline if you were never given one. This isn't just a failure of memory; it's a failure of the "ruler" we use to measure it.
This makes the "drowning" metaphor you cited even more grim. As you so perfectly phrase it, they are "lulled into unawareness." They don't feel the suffocation. They were born submerged and have been taught, by the very institutions that should be educating them, to call it breathing. We need somehow to turn the clock back.
What's not mentioned, though, is the associated source of some of this technology reliance: the workplace. Many companies, from fast food restaurants to consulting firms, adopt technology and then force employees to work ever harder and faster using it. It's no longer a choice for the employee. If you don't use all the available technology, if you try to rely solely on your own brain, you simply cannot keep up. It's an extremely difficult place to be. I am sure my Gen X brain has suffered the consequences over my career.
Great points Lyka. This isn't about choice, as you say. It's about coercion. The workplace is where this "technology reliance" is mandated, not just adopted. Your phrase "you simply cannot keep up" is so real. It's a cognitive arms race, and the "un-augmented" brain is a guaranteed loser.
This makes the workplace the boot camp for the cognitive decline. We are trained all day to outsource, to multitask, to fragment our attention. Then we go home, and the social/entertainment arm of the machine takes over, exploiting the very pathways the workday just carved.
Your point about Gen X is especially poignant. You are the generation that had to perform the migration. You had a choice: see your brain "suffer the consequences" or become professionally obsolete.
That's not a choice. That's a threat. You have pointed to the forced, structural nature of this rewiring. Thank you.
"The political question of our century is no longer who controls the means of production? but who controls the means of perception?"
Rupert Murdoch, Elon Mu卐kRat, Zuck, Altman, Theil, etc.
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"The young cannot. They are digital natives in the truest, bleakest sense, born in a country that remembers nothing of itself".
A most disturbing development.
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"Wong’s paper will be filed, cited, and forgotten like the rest. But read plainly, it documents the first epidemiological evidence of a cognitive collapse engineered by design. The authors close with professional understatement: the findings “warrant further investigation.” One hopes we remain capable of conducting it".
Colin, there is something that would cause these things in people that few people will actually consider and thus no action is being taken to force the steps needed to correct what is going on, and most people I know are absolutely perceptually blind to it, unable to accept that it may be right.
In the 1950's there was a lot of work done by the Chinese under Mao for thought reform. They used it against PoWs, it sparked a lot of controversies and research, and that work continued beyond the Chinese by every major government today.
What they discovered is that under extreme prolonged stress beyond an individual's ability to cope, people become compliant. That stress and trauma cause their rational ability to disagree, to think, to recall, and intelligence in general to wane. There is a point that they reach which is a state of involuntary hypnosis where they adopt minute suggestions and mannerisms of the torturer into their core identity, and given enough exposure; eventually they succumb and break completely either into a dissassociative fugue-like state, or into a semi-lucid psychosis that seeks self-annihilation through others (capable of planning).
Intelligent people are at the highest risk for this because they generally perceive more than other people. When this is done young (as children), the process forever damages them thereafter distorting their abilities crippling them.
These things have been embedded in school and bureacratic processes since the 1970s. The technology used today surreptitiously does this for adtech to manipulate individuals. The cell phone allows unending exposure, and unlike torture from older times; you can impose stress without needing to resort to physical violence. The blindspots can induce stress largely without accurate awareness of it happening.
There are psychological blindspots we all have in our perception that can be taken advantage of to induce an inconsistent mental state through language and communication. The US military calls it memetics. The chinese often refer to activities they use as "Destroying the national will" which involves demoralizing, destabilizing, bringing to crisis, and renormalizing stages of regime change.
No one recognizes torture today, just like few actually recognize evil people by the willful blindness they exhibit.
The elements are as follows, you will find them literally everywhere because the processes optimize for this to impose that stress and cost on people purposefully. If there are one or two, probably not, but when they are all or almost all there; most definitely there is torture intended.
What makes this particularly difficult to tackle is most people don't evaluate indirections to a defining underlying thing (but intelligent people do). These average people will often falsely believe that doing these things isn't torture, because there is no specific intent on their part to torture; but this is foundationally flawed as false justification.
Arbitrarily imposing loss or cost in the form of stress subliminally on anyone for purpose (knowing or not) in a process that everyone needs to deal with; when brought to someone's attention, and not addressed is grounds for gross misconduct/negligence because they inflict loss. Gross negligence is required to prove a generalized form of intent to show malice. Systems are often optimized and designed to get people to do horrible things to others through complacency, following a strategy of separation of objectionable concerns which originated from the Nazi's/Stasi. Anyone following such a system and willfully choosing to not correct the arbitrary loss is showing malice when they've been told and willfully ignored it, regardless of their belief.
Doing an Adversarial Review, if you take a victims perspective and find that most of these things are present, or when ambiguous can't be proved they aren't present. Then there's a real objective problem.
Are these Elements present?:
Isolation [all blindspots are more effective with greater degrees of isolation]
Cognitive Dissonance (by deception or otherwise) - where reality doesn't match expectations or advertisement
Elicitation to participate (inaction causes loss)
Lack of Agency to Remove Oneself [stripping locus of control, one can't leave without losing something]
Real or Perceived Threat of Loss [in any form, time resource, etc]
Loss (regardless of what you do where you are directed on a false path, or skewed probabilities)
Psychological Blindspot (a Cialdini lever, or distorted reflected appraisal)
Are these Structures present?:
Circular Trauma Loops where you have periods of strictness followed by leniency, punishment followed by relief, pushing followed by pulling, confession/induction followed by catharsis.
Is there clustering?
Some things create greater susceptibility as they occur more closely in time. This occurs because people sensitize towards stimulus when loss occurs, its individual but is most effective against highly intelligent people. Less stimuli noticed, habituation and discarding occur instead.
Any stimuli could do this, and those that are compromised towards addiction, are at greater risk. Narco-synthesis used barbituates to flood dopamine in the 1950s. Today you can do the same through misassociation of operant conditioned dopamine spikes through an individuals phone.
Food for thought: Things likely wouldn't have gotten to the point they are at today if intelligent people were in the same demographic volumes they were in 50 years ago. More than likely our society has been killing off the most intelligent people in the cradle through these surreptitious methods that start before the age of reason in grade school.
Intelligent people normally raise others up around them allowing everyone to operate on a higher perceptual level through communication. Without them, the average person falls to the lowest common blind denominator, and everything fails. We are living through an age of ruin, and eventually our food production systems will fail and the people we needed to solve the problems died, or were so traumatized that they didn't have what was needed to have children. A lost generation.
When subjected to such malevolence and such an imposition of uncopable stress, everyone eventually breaks; and when they do they look crazy because they were broken. Media inspires people to not pay attention, through distorting the reality of crazy. You can discount crazy, and no one is being held to account for causing the crazy. What is appropos is this follows a movie script called "The Kovak Box" and it might be entertaining if it didn't have a strong basis in reality.
First they came for the intelligent because they are agents of change and progress, and it was so clever no average person noticed; we thought it was something else. Something so monstrous can't possibly be. Then they slowly came for everyone else and no one noticed it happening because it was so gradual and people were so fractionated unable to perceive. Now we're staring over a cliff at the railroad tracks we travel on at full speed that no one can stop because the people that would rally others to stop it were destroyed.
All in the name of power and control.
Semantic collapse just over the horizon where agency to change outcomes is gone and we are a species that has high technological lethality with MAD dependent on rational factors that will collapse without external intervention as a system. Quite worrying.
Edit: Clarified some of the wording/subject agreement flow to be more clear.
interesting. i know there was something happening to young people since the early 1980's, especially given the advent of video games. however, i did not know that middle-aged people were also vulnerable to this phenomenon. my personal theory is that this has something to do with 60hz screen refresh rate which can entrain the human brain, interrupting certain neural pathways. so what happened in 2017 which accelerated the process for all age groups? perhaps the movement away from CRT and projection type screens to LED/LCD type screens? and as we speak, i find this abstract:
Excellent James, this is a fascinating line of inquiry. You're looking at the physicality of the medium itself, not just the "content" it delivers. The idea that the very light and flicker of the screen could be a 'softening agent' for the nervous system, a biological-floor vulnerability, is so stark.
My post's thesis from the study focused on the software layer, the "machinery of disattention." But you're looking for the 2016-2017 (the Wong study's "statistically significant" start date) accelerator in the hardware.
The abstract you linked is a great find, and it certainly points to the physical dangers of LED light.
Perhaps the acceleration we see in the data is a horrifying 'perfect storm,' a 'both/and' event.
The Physical Layer (Your theory): The near-total replacement of older screens with these high-intensity, flickering LED/LCDs provides the physical entrainment, a constant, low-level neurological stress.
The Informational Layer (My posts theory from the research): Around 2016 is precisely when the algorithmic feed, optimized for 'engagement' (read: 'agitation'), fully matured.
Maybe it's a one-two punch. The hardware layer you describe (the LED light) degrades the physical brain, while the software layer I describe (the algorithmic feed) degrades the "software" of the mind.
You have added a deeply unsettling, and very plausible, physical dimension to the problem. It's not just what we're looking at; it's the physical act of looking at it. Thank you for sharing this.
I concur with your theory of inquiry, as this possibility occurred to me as well. I appreciate you sharing the study. It's chilling that the last line of that study says,"this topic is of interest for potential applications in depression" especially since we know that those who feel depressed tend to be staring at screens even more than others have, and engaginng with AI chatbot for hours.
It's interesting how we hear about wearing blue light screening glasses but little about the refresh rate. Perhaps it's because you can't Sell anything for that.The emphasis is on it being better to get off screens before bedtime due to blue light, not the refresh rate.
Is there a reason why they can't reduce the 60 hz refresh rate? Don't Kindle readers have a lower rate?
I'm thinking that older people still tend to read hard copy books so that would be a factor in the age categories here. I struggle with e-books as, not only do I read quickly, but I tend to notice the screen refreshing when reading for a long time.
And, let's not forget that a significant proportion of the population now spends all there workday staring at screen, before they go home and do the same at night
Most concerning is the extensive amount of screen viewing that is happening with those under 18, those not included in this study.
Goodness Wendy, you read James' comment perfectly and have hit on a terrifying feedback loop. That abstract's conclusion is indeed chilling. It's not just that depression is linked, but that the 'potential application' could drive the afflicted back to the very medium that may be part of the problem. Your point about AI chatbots is the perfect, bleak extension!
Your observation about the commercial motive is lethally precise. We are offered a product (blue-light glasses) to mitigate a symptom (sleep disruption), while the potential cause (the 60Hz standard) goes unexamined because, as you say, the solution isn't marketable. It's a systemic choice, not a medical one. We should not take these devices into our bedrooms! Mine is deliberately outside on the 'landing/hallway'
Your question about Kindle is exactly right. An e-ink screen is static; it reflects ambient light, just like a hard-copy book. It's not a light source, so I believe, although I do not use one. Our LED/LCD screens, however, are backlit and refreshing 60 times every second, designed for fluid video, not for static text. We have standardized a hardware spec optimized for motion and applied it, universally, to reading. Your own anecdote about noticing the refresh proves you're sensitive to this fundamental mismatch.
You are absolutely correct to bring it all back to the 'work -> home' pipeline, and finally, to the unstudied. The Wong study is a 10-year snapshot of adults. The truly terrifying variable is the generation below them, the ones who have had this hardware and these software-layer feeds since infancy. We are running the largest, most uncontrolled neurological experiment in human history on them, and this Wong paper is likely just the first, faint signal from the cohort ahead of them. I hope that this study is reported widely and often.
I have never had any electronic devices in my bedroom, nor do I read on a screen past 20:00 if I can help it; after that time, it is printed material only.
I'd like to use a Kindle for my e-books, but I read too fast to tolerate the small screen. I do not know why it is so small.
Colin, it is a terrifying feedback loop, and from what I see, it won't be interrupted, with a terrifying and bleak outcome on individuals. We are only beginning to see the outcomes of what what you precisely term " the largest, most uncontrolled neurological experiment in human history" on children, who have no say in it. It is parents' responsibility to protect their children.
And we do see outcomes already with preschoolers who can't maintain even a focus on playing. It is unbelievably tragic that studies are demonstrating how their brains are being affected, perhaps permanently, as it impacts neuron development, and yet, that knowledge is not in the public arena.
I wonder how these children will react at 20 years old when they discover that some of their life issues stem from being exposed to what by then may be known to be as possibly as permanent as fetal alcohol syndrome is on pre-born babies.
There are days I feel a deep grief pondering this.
Wow, Wendy what a connection with 'fetal alcohol syndrome'. that is the best connection i have heard for this disease. When I stay in hotels with Sophie this is exactly what I see at the breakfast tables, parents who are addicts passing the addiction to children, this is an epidemic.
Your personal discipline is exactly the same as mine. "Printed material only" after 8 PM is the very definition of building a cognitive sanctuary. You are actively curating your own mental environment. This is no small thing.
You are right to feel that "deep grief." It is not an overreaction; it is the only rational response to the evidence you are citing. The tragedy is precisely as you have framed it.
That observation about preschoolers is the "canary in the coal mine." The Wong study looks at adults, but you are pointing to the inception of the problem. When a child "can't maintain even a focus on playing," they are losing the very mechanism by which they build a mind in the first place.
The parallel to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is terrifyingly apt. It frames this not as a "bad habit" but as a form of developmental neurotoxicity. And it perfectly tees up your question: what is the reckoning when this generation, damaged without its consent, grows up to understand what was taken from them?
When I pick Sophie up from school, I see children (10 years old) run to the security desk to pick up their phones, I ask her if she needs to pick up her phone and she says "no, I did not bring it" then I smile inside from my heart.
I spend quite a bit of screen time on my job in addition to spending time working with AI. Not medical advice, but my wife and I have stumbled on our solution against societal driven EMF. Thee are devices which emit pulsed EMF within biological energy bands. There are many commercially available on the market which one might find useful. A popular one is BEMER. We have gravitated towards FSM. We take an epsom salt bath and soak with frequencies by putting the leads in the bath water. You sleep like a baby afterwards. We do it weekly.
Hi James, I also spend a fair amount of time on screens, as I research and study material extensively.
These devices are interesting. I frequently use a TENS machine, but my understanding is that the FSM has a deeper impulsing so that it will target deeper tissues Thank you for the suggestion.
Yes. Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) and the like are all considered microcurrent devices. Unlike TENS units which delivers a thousand times more energy, hence the muscle stimulation, these devices emit frequencies that are in the microamps/microtesla ranges. There is hardly any muscle stimulation at all. The frequences are square wave (as opposed to sine waves) and are low frequencies (1 to 999 hz) and are programmable. The thought is that each frequency set or pairs have specific biologic effects and can be modulated depending on needs. The low frequencies allow for the penetration throughout the body. That's not to say that higher frequencies all the way to terahertz (visible light ranges) do not have biologic effects. They do, but their penetration is fairly shallow, with the exception of gigahertz ranges. Russian investigators believe that those actions at a distance occur via bioactive (acupuncture) points. So one can see how modern society exposing us to random radiation can serve to scramble biologic intercommunications at 60 hz and higher. Pure signals can result in stronger effects. In the US how the frequencies were found began with Albert Abrams and his experiments back in 1890's. However, Carol McMakin, the founder, has a book called "The Resonance Effect" which is essentially a biography of her career if you wish to explore it further. She has also published a compelling clinical trial in humans that is a cytokine study:
This is a comment via email and my response. Dear Colin,
Declining memory is a good thing in some ways. We need no longer try to remember addresses and telephone numbers if we can record them in a file called “Address List” in our personal computers. That reduces mental “clutter”---I suppose. But it is not a theorem that each additional item we remember displaces another memory as one of my bridge friends alleged. Perhaps it’s exactly the opposite.
For example, as I pass through my 80s, my memory fails me more often. A couple of years ago, I had trouble remembering the names of the couple who lived her door to my girlfriend, a very nice man and woman. My memory failure troubled me. It took me a day and a half to have the names come to me---through association with something else.
“Who were the centers for the Boston Celtics when they were among the best basketball teams?” Bill Russell. Then Dave Cowens. Then Robert Parrish. Ah, that’s it! Lloyd Parrish.
“What are some of the forts in the United States?” Fort Bragg. Ah, that’s it! Karen Bragg!
But in most ways, the declining memory that comes with aging is a bad thing. 75 years ago, when I was at my peak in chess, I could rely on the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense. 60 years ago, when I played my last competitive chess (as an emergency substitute for the fourth board of Lina Grumette’s team that had a match against the team of Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena), the rust had already settled in and I had to wing it. Lina played first board, Irving Rivise played second board and I do not remember the name of the third board, but the fourth board was “Tigran Petrosian” (can you guess why?) … who should have been playing first board.
In my 70s, I could still solve the chess problems posted in the back room of the bridge club that was sublet to a chess club. Now, in my late 80s, I can solve some chess problems I somehow see posted on the internet but I must abandon my efforts to solve others as too time-consuming to undertake. I believe that memory is involved in a roundabout way. As I think of what move to play at the second turn, I must work hard to keep in mind the changes in the position my first move and the opponent’s reply produced.
My arithmetical abilities faded dramatically about 35 years ago. Until then, I wondered why world-class backgammon players (I had become good but not world-class) consulted me to solve problems in non-contact bearoff positions: Good enough to redouble? Good enough to take? No insights involved, just do the math. I could do the math by writing down products and quotients on a sheet of paper. In my early 50s, I found myself unable to do so reliably without writing down the intermediate steps that were taught in grade school, as I could no longer just “see” the products and quotients. Memory? Probably. I could no longer remember the “carries” without writing them down.
Perhaps the only mental ability that remains intact for me at age 88 is imagination. Two days ago I posed a problem to one of my contemporaries at the local bridge club, Tony, an author of one or two bridge books (that I haven’t read). In bridge, there are many principles called “Rules” and “Laws” by the experts who proposed them. I mentioned a few of them.
Ely Culbertson’s “Rule of 2 and 3.” Don Pearson’s “Rule of 15.” Marty Bergen’s “Rule of 20.”
A few of my “rules” of which I’m sure Tony never heard (my ideas get very little publicity):
The Rule of 25. The Rule of 19. The Rule of 3/8ths. The Rule of -1. Yes, I discriminate neither against fractions nor against negative numbers.
What all these rules have in common is that not everyone will agree with them. I dissent with the three cited first. Others may disagree with the four of my own rules. If somebody disagrees with me, I can only say, “You may be right.” Perhaps some other fraction would be more accurate than 3/8ths. Perhaps a “Rule of 18” would be better than my Rule of 19. Perhaps a Rule of 24.7 would be better than the Rule of 25.
I challenged Tony to find a well-known “rule” in bridge that is taught in many bridge books from which nobody can dissent and asked him not to answer quickly but to ponder it at leisure and “sleep on it” (a better way to fall asleep than “counting sheep”). Perhaps I shall encounter Tony at the club today or tomorrow and he will have thought of it.
Currently I am co-authoring a bridge book with a contemporary (Jim) at the other end of the continent. In the last four or five years, I’ve co-authored nine other bridge books with Jim and edited several others with him (our usual procedure is that he asks me to edit, and when he sees my first few rewrites of his bridge deals asks me to co-author). Jim, a golfer, has often written deals up where the declarer plays against the Devil, and fails. I edited Jim’s use of “the Devil” by calling him “Lucifer M. Mephistopheles,” a more respectful name. The merciful Mr. Mephistopheles offers the declarer a “Mulligan” (a golf term meaning a do-over): replay the deal, “but if you fail again, I’ll take your soul.”
I’ll give you a hint at the problem I posed to Tony. The “Rule” from which nobody can dissent is actually a theorem. So I thought to include in the book I am currently writing with Jim a dialogue in which Mr. Mephistopheles plays the role of … (did you guess?) Devil’s Advocate and rejects the Rule that is a theorem. I had to argue with Jim to leave this passage in.
Now I’ll tease you: could the Devil be right to reject the Rule that is a theorem?
In the dialogue Lucifer M. Mephistopheles opposes his (fraternal) twin brother, Srini R. Mathestopheles who offers a proof of the theorem. And yes, the Devil is right … for two reasons I invite you to guess. [You’re welcome to seek help from any Polish bridge expert you know.] I wonder if I would have thought to include this dialogue half a century ago when I was at my peak as a bridge player. Might some of the changes that age has snowed on me be improvements?
[Oops, the artificial intelligence embedded in this email server---Microsoft Outlook---just underlined the word “snowed” in the sentence above as though it were an error, but surely you can see why it isn’t.]
Yours,
Danny
Dear Danny
Thank you for this incredible comment. It's a profound, personal, and deeply moving reflection. That is quite a vital distinction between the "declining memory" that is a feature of a long and complex life, and the one I am trying to describe in the substack post, a systemic, artificial hollowing-out of the young.
What I find so powerful in your stories is that they describe a mind that is adapting, not just failing. Your anecdote about finding your neighbors' names is a perfect illustration. It's not a simple file-pull. It's an act of associative triumph. It's the journey through the Celtics' centers that proves the mind is still a vast, interconnected web, not a simple database.
But the connection you make, the one that strikes me as most chillingly relevant to the Wong study, is about chess and arithmetic. You describe no longer being able to "see" the products or hold the board state in your head. That isn't just recall; it's working space. It's the mental RAM. That is the very "serious difficulty concentrating" that the young are now reporting.
The horror of the study is that you are describing this at the end of 88 magnificent years, and they are describing it at the beginning.
And yet, your most brilliant point is the one you save for last. The idea that as these procedural faculties have become more effortful, your imagination has not just remained intact, but has sharpened. This is extraordinary. The "Rule of -1," the glorious "Lucifer M. Mephistopheles" versus "Srini R. Mathestopheles"... this is cognition at its highest, most human, and most playful. It suggests that wisdom isn't about memory; it's about the creative power that blossoms in the space that rote calculation once occupied.
As for your magnificent challenge... how can the Devil be right to reject a theorem? My only guess is that a theorem is only as true as its axioms, and perhaps Mr. Mephistopheles (with help from a Polish expert, no doubt) objects to the axioms themselves. Perhaps the "Rule" is proven in a vacuum, but the Devil, who plays at the table, knows that the vacuum doesn't exist.
Thank you for this. "Snowed" is, as you noted, precisely the right word.
Stay well
Colin
Agree that his word “snowed” is quite appropos.
Life lived in a “snow globe” comes to mind as invisible boundaries that are unseen, but omnipresent. The snow blurs surroundings, perceptions, just enough to allow movement, or agency, but with no clear distant vision. The illusion of limitlessness ensconced in the “snow globe” of one’s prescience parametered.
Congratulations to your friend’s 88 years well lived.
The "snow globe" is a hauntingly accurate extension of Danny's metaphor. It captures the essence of a mind that is still active, shaking the glass to watch the flakes swirl, but is fundamentally enclosed.
Your point about the "illusion of limitlessness" is particularly sharp. Within the globe, everything seems possible, yet the "prescience parameters" are fixed. It describes a form of cognitive agency that has lost its horizon. For the young people in the Wong study, the digital feed is their snow globe. It offers an infinite scroll that creates the sensation of vastness, while actually narrowing their perception to a blur of the immediate present.
Danny’s 88 years represent a mind that was formed in the clear air before the storm. Even as the "snow" of age settles, he still knows what the landscape looks like without it. The tragedy for the digital natives is that they were born inside the glass. They have no memory of a distant vision to compare to the blur.
Thank you for this beautiful and insightful.
Thanks for writing about this study. The results of are even worse than I had guessed and so important. As you say, the problem of cognitive deskilling should be discussed urgently and with compassion. Mindfulness is needed for memory, and a pure record is not the same as having a memory.
Thank you for this, you have given the problem its proper name: "cognitive deskilling." It's a term that deserves to be front and center.
Your point about the "pure record" versus "having a memory" is the perfect summary of the crisis. One is a dead file; the other is a living, human process. I'm glad this piece caught your eye, and I appreciate you adding such a sharp and vital point to the discussion. Mindfulness is an intention I set daily, you are right it is an essential skill.
There is an important thread of over 120 comments on HackerNews about this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863057
Interesting comments. A friend’s daughter is committed to riding horses. Her first serious accident was without a cell phone. Her second while wearing an Apple Watch probably saved her life as it was extremely serious. The pros and cons vary and when possible to assess risk is a necessary decision.
Suddenly, being old is a privilege – who could ever have imagined that?
The only part of the study that made me smile:-)
In an era where devices are being proposed to acquire an "absolute memory," which implies absolute stupidity like that in Jorge Luis Borges's story: "Funes the Memorious," other devices silently impose on us another form of acquired stupidity, a declining memory and an impossible thought. Thank you for your brilliant articles.
Thank you Daniel. We are caught between two equally sterile versions of "impossible thought."
On one hand, the Funes-like promise of "absolute memory", a digital recall so perfect that it, like his, is a form of paralysis. A mind that cannot forget, cannot abstract, cannot think.
On the other, the "acquired stupidity" you so rightly name: the silent, systemic atrophy imposed by our devices, where we don't even get the perfect record, we just get the "declining memory."
We are building Funes's library, but in the process, we are becoming his precise opposite. Not the man who can't forget, but the civilization that can't remember.
Thank you for this perfect, and perfectly dark, insight.
Colin, this was a distressing post to read, even though, within our field, we have abundant anecdotal evidence to confirm this cognitive disability in students.
I agree that even if "people might not be more willing to self -report it; they are less able to conceal it." It is glaringly obvious when one speaks with them.This cognitive disability affects their personal and work lives, but it is even more so a primacy concern for democracy. Democracy has always required informed citizens, citizens that can understand beyond the first order outcome to the third order outcomes of each policy, and to analyze which is better for their country at the moment. Even more so, their ability to articulate outrage when the policy harm citizens and to dialogue with government is paramount to democracy, for it forestalls tyranny.
I've noted before that schools are not nurturing a well-educated student. If we add to their lack of substantive knowledge this inability to concentrate and remember, well, even IF they were taught it, how will they even be aware of how to use it?
Colin, those under 18 are already being told what the past is and they believe it, even as I attempt to teach them otherwise. It is part of the ongoing cognitive warfare battle that is increasingly aided by this cognitive disability.
After reading the paper, I suggest that the self-reporting of cognitive disability fails to reveals the true extend of the rise since 2013. We need a more objective test. As well, at the upper end of those years, many would be unaware of their loss, as they would begin with less well-developed cognitive skills.
I truly dread to consider the impact on the cognitive disability of this current generation, the 2-18 year olds now, when they are tested in even five years. It is one reason I question the self-reporting. If you have never been exposed to what we call a classical education, or been trained to engage with material until it makes sense to you, without any AI help, how would you even know what being cognitive ability is ?
Your compelling imagery created "that "to name 'reliance on technology' as a risk factor is like diagnosing “submersion” in a drowning victim," is precisely the point, isn't it ? People are being drown through submersion in technological reliance, only they don't feel their suffocation, they are lulled into unawareness of all they are losing.
Thank you Wendy. This report from the front lines of education is precisely the validation that makes this "distressing." You are seeing the "abundant anecdotal evidence" in real-time.
I believe that you have correctly identified the true, catastrophic stake: this is a civilizational crisis, not just a personal one. The cognitive faculties we are discussing are not a luxury for a "classical education"; they are the non-negotiable prerequisite for a republic a State. A citizenry that cannot follow an argument to its "third-order outcomes" is a citizenry that will, without fail, vote for its own dissolution.
Your confirmation that students "are already being told what the past is and they believe it" is the most chilling part. It means the "cognitive warfare" is not a future threat; it's a present-tense, mop-up operation which we must take on vigorously.
But your most devastating insight, and one I am now turning over in my own mind, is your critique of the study's methodology. You are absolutely right. The self-reporting must be a vast undercount.
Your question is the one that exposes the true depth of the problem: "how would you even know what being cognitive ability is?"
People cannot self-report the loss of a faculty you were never trained to possess. We cannot feel the loss of a "classical" baseline if you were never given one. This isn't just a failure of memory; it's a failure of the "ruler" we use to measure it.
This makes the "drowning" metaphor you cited even more grim. As you so perfectly phrase it, they are "lulled into unawareness." They don't feel the suffocation. They were born submerged and have been taught, by the very institutions that should be educating them, to call it breathing. We need somehow to turn the clock back.
What's not mentioned, though, is the associated source of some of this technology reliance: the workplace. Many companies, from fast food restaurants to consulting firms, adopt technology and then force employees to work ever harder and faster using it. It's no longer a choice for the employee. If you don't use all the available technology, if you try to rely solely on your own brain, you simply cannot keep up. It's an extremely difficult place to be. I am sure my Gen X brain has suffered the consequences over my career.
Great points Lyka. This isn't about choice, as you say. It's about coercion. The workplace is where this "technology reliance" is mandated, not just adopted. Your phrase "you simply cannot keep up" is so real. It's a cognitive arms race, and the "un-augmented" brain is a guaranteed loser.
This makes the workplace the boot camp for the cognitive decline. We are trained all day to outsource, to multitask, to fragment our attention. Then we go home, and the social/entertainment arm of the machine takes over, exploiting the very pathways the workday just carved.
Your point about Gen X is especially poignant. You are the generation that had to perform the migration. You had a choice: see your brain "suffer the consequences" or become professionally obsolete.
That's not a choice. That's a threat. You have pointed to the forced, structural nature of this rewiring. Thank you.
"The political question of our century is no longer who controls the means of production? but who controls the means of perception?"
Rupert Murdoch, Elon Mu卐kRat, Zuck, Altman, Theil, etc.
.
"The young cannot. They are digital natives in the truest, bleakest sense, born in a country that remembers nothing of itself".
A most disturbing development.
.
"Wong’s paper will be filed, cited, and forgotten like the rest. But read plainly, it documents the first epidemiological evidence of a cognitive collapse engineered by design. The authors close with professional understatement: the findings “warrant further investigation.” One hopes we remain capable of conducting it".
Civilization is in serious trouble.
Of all the times we have said "scary" together... this is beginning to provide empirical evidence.
Hopefully it'll lead us to a better path than the one we've been on. 🤞🤞🤞
The future should determine the present - not the other way around.
Indeed! Unfortunately, those in power only see their bottom lines.
Winston, read the comments about this post here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863057
I'm checking it out now.
Colin, there is something that would cause these things in people that few people will actually consider and thus no action is being taken to force the steps needed to correct what is going on, and most people I know are absolutely perceptually blind to it, unable to accept that it may be right.
In the 1950's there was a lot of work done by the Chinese under Mao for thought reform. They used it against PoWs, it sparked a lot of controversies and research, and that work continued beyond the Chinese by every major government today.
What they discovered is that under extreme prolonged stress beyond an individual's ability to cope, people become compliant. That stress and trauma cause their rational ability to disagree, to think, to recall, and intelligence in general to wane. There is a point that they reach which is a state of involuntary hypnosis where they adopt minute suggestions and mannerisms of the torturer into their core identity, and given enough exposure; eventually they succumb and break completely either into a dissassociative fugue-like state, or into a semi-lucid psychosis that seeks self-annihilation through others (capable of planning).
Intelligent people are at the highest risk for this because they generally perceive more than other people. When this is done young (as children), the process forever damages them thereafter distorting their abilities crippling them.
These things have been embedded in school and bureacratic processes since the 1970s. The technology used today surreptitiously does this for adtech to manipulate individuals. The cell phone allows unending exposure, and unlike torture from older times; you can impose stress without needing to resort to physical violence. The blindspots can induce stress largely without accurate awareness of it happening.
There are psychological blindspots we all have in our perception that can be taken advantage of to induce an inconsistent mental state through language and communication. The US military calls it memetics. The chinese often refer to activities they use as "Destroying the national will" which involves demoralizing, destabilizing, bringing to crisis, and renormalizing stages of regime change.
No one recognizes torture today, just like few actually recognize evil people by the willful blindness they exhibit.
The elements are as follows, you will find them literally everywhere because the processes optimize for this to impose that stress and cost on people purposefully. If there are one or two, probably not, but when they are all or almost all there; most definitely there is torture intended.
What makes this particularly difficult to tackle is most people don't evaluate indirections to a defining underlying thing (but intelligent people do). These average people will often falsely believe that doing these things isn't torture, because there is no specific intent on their part to torture; but this is foundationally flawed as false justification.
Arbitrarily imposing loss or cost in the form of stress subliminally on anyone for purpose (knowing or not) in a process that everyone needs to deal with; when brought to someone's attention, and not addressed is grounds for gross misconduct/negligence because they inflict loss. Gross negligence is required to prove a generalized form of intent to show malice. Systems are often optimized and designed to get people to do horrible things to others through complacency, following a strategy of separation of objectionable concerns which originated from the Nazi's/Stasi. Anyone following such a system and willfully choosing to not correct the arbitrary loss is showing malice when they've been told and willfully ignored it, regardless of their belief.
Doing an Adversarial Review, if you take a victims perspective and find that most of these things are present, or when ambiguous can't be proved they aren't present. Then there's a real objective problem.
Are these Elements present?:
Isolation [all blindspots are more effective with greater degrees of isolation]
Cognitive Dissonance (by deception or otherwise) - where reality doesn't match expectations or advertisement
Elicitation to participate (inaction causes loss)
Lack of Agency to Remove Oneself [stripping locus of control, one can't leave without losing something]
Real or Perceived Threat of Loss [in any form, time resource, etc]
Loss (regardless of what you do where you are directed on a false path, or skewed probabilities)
Psychological Blindspot (a Cialdini lever, or distorted reflected appraisal)
Are these Structures present?:
Circular Trauma Loops where you have periods of strictness followed by leniency, punishment followed by relief, pushing followed by pulling, confession/induction followed by catharsis.
Is there clustering?
Some things create greater susceptibility as they occur more closely in time. This occurs because people sensitize towards stimulus when loss occurs, its individual but is most effective against highly intelligent people. Less stimuli noticed, habituation and discarding occur instead.
Any stimuli could do this, and those that are compromised towards addiction, are at greater risk. Narco-synthesis used barbituates to flood dopamine in the 1950s. Today you can do the same through misassociation of operant conditioned dopamine spikes through an individuals phone.
Food for thought: Things likely wouldn't have gotten to the point they are at today if intelligent people were in the same demographic volumes they were in 50 years ago. More than likely our society has been killing off the most intelligent people in the cradle through these surreptitious methods that start before the age of reason in grade school.
Intelligent people normally raise others up around them allowing everyone to operate on a higher perceptual level through communication. Without them, the average person falls to the lowest common blind denominator, and everything fails. We are living through an age of ruin, and eventually our food production systems will fail and the people we needed to solve the problems died, or were so traumatized that they didn't have what was needed to have children. A lost generation.
When subjected to such malevolence and such an imposition of uncopable stress, everyone eventually breaks; and when they do they look crazy because they were broken. Media inspires people to not pay attention, through distorting the reality of crazy. You can discount crazy, and no one is being held to account for causing the crazy. What is appropos is this follows a movie script called "The Kovak Box" and it might be entertaining if it didn't have a strong basis in reality.
First they came for the intelligent because they are agents of change and progress, and it was so clever no average person noticed; we thought it was something else. Something so monstrous can't possibly be. Then they slowly came for everyone else and no one noticed it happening because it was so gradual and people were so fractionated unable to perceive. Now we're staring over a cliff at the railroad tracks we travel on at full speed that no one can stop because the people that would rally others to stop it were destroyed.
All in the name of power and control.
Semantic collapse just over the horizon where agency to change outcomes is gone and we are a species that has high technological lethality with MAD dependent on rational factors that will collapse without external intervention as a system. Quite worrying.
Edit: Clarified some of the wording/subject agreement flow to be more clear.
interesting. i know there was something happening to young people since the early 1980's, especially given the advent of video games. however, i did not know that middle-aged people were also vulnerable to this phenomenon. my personal theory is that this has something to do with 60hz screen refresh rate which can entrain the human brain, interrupting certain neural pathways. so what happened in 2017 which accelerated the process for all age groups? perhaps the movement away from CRT and projection type screens to LED/LCD type screens? and as we speak, i find this abstract:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12359758/
Excellent James, this is a fascinating line of inquiry. You're looking at the physicality of the medium itself, not just the "content" it delivers. The idea that the very light and flicker of the screen could be a 'softening agent' for the nervous system, a biological-floor vulnerability, is so stark.
My post's thesis from the study focused on the software layer, the "machinery of disattention." But you're looking for the 2016-2017 (the Wong study's "statistically significant" start date) accelerator in the hardware.
The abstract you linked is a great find, and it certainly points to the physical dangers of LED light.
Perhaps the acceleration we see in the data is a horrifying 'perfect storm,' a 'both/and' event.
The Physical Layer (Your theory): The near-total replacement of older screens with these high-intensity, flickering LED/LCDs provides the physical entrainment, a constant, low-level neurological stress.
The Informational Layer (My posts theory from the research): Around 2016 is precisely when the algorithmic feed, optimized for 'engagement' (read: 'agitation'), fully matured.
Maybe it's a one-two punch. The hardware layer you describe (the LED light) degrades the physical brain, while the software layer I describe (the algorithmic feed) degrades the "software" of the mind.
You have added a deeply unsettling, and very plausible, physical dimension to the problem. It's not just what we're looking at; it's the physical act of looking at it. Thank you for sharing this.
I concur with your theory of inquiry, as this possibility occurred to me as well. I appreciate you sharing the study. It's chilling that the last line of that study says,"this topic is of interest for potential applications in depression" especially since we know that those who feel depressed tend to be staring at screens even more than others have, and engaginng with AI chatbot for hours.
It's interesting how we hear about wearing blue light screening glasses but little about the refresh rate. Perhaps it's because you can't Sell anything for that.The emphasis is on it being better to get off screens before bedtime due to blue light, not the refresh rate.
Is there a reason why they can't reduce the 60 hz refresh rate? Don't Kindle readers have a lower rate?
I'm thinking that older people still tend to read hard copy books so that would be a factor in the age categories here. I struggle with e-books as, not only do I read quickly, but I tend to notice the screen refreshing when reading for a long time.
And, let's not forget that a significant proportion of the population now spends all there workday staring at screen, before they go home and do the same at night
Most concerning is the extensive amount of screen viewing that is happening with those under 18, those not included in this study.
Goodness Wendy, you read James' comment perfectly and have hit on a terrifying feedback loop. That abstract's conclusion is indeed chilling. It's not just that depression is linked, but that the 'potential application' could drive the afflicted back to the very medium that may be part of the problem. Your point about AI chatbots is the perfect, bleak extension!
Your observation about the commercial motive is lethally precise. We are offered a product (blue-light glasses) to mitigate a symptom (sleep disruption), while the potential cause (the 60Hz standard) goes unexamined because, as you say, the solution isn't marketable. It's a systemic choice, not a medical one. We should not take these devices into our bedrooms! Mine is deliberately outside on the 'landing/hallway'
Your question about Kindle is exactly right. An e-ink screen is static; it reflects ambient light, just like a hard-copy book. It's not a light source, so I believe, although I do not use one. Our LED/LCD screens, however, are backlit and refreshing 60 times every second, designed for fluid video, not for static text. We have standardized a hardware spec optimized for motion and applied it, universally, to reading. Your own anecdote about noticing the refresh proves you're sensitive to this fundamental mismatch.
You are absolutely correct to bring it all back to the 'work -> home' pipeline, and finally, to the unstudied. The Wong study is a 10-year snapshot of adults. The truly terrifying variable is the generation below them, the ones who have had this hardware and these software-layer feeds since infancy. We are running the largest, most uncontrolled neurological experiment in human history on them, and this Wong paper is likely just the first, faint signal from the cohort ahead of them. I hope that this study is reported widely and often.
I have never had any electronic devices in my bedroom, nor do I read on a screen past 20:00 if I can help it; after that time, it is printed material only.
I'd like to use a Kindle for my e-books, but I read too fast to tolerate the small screen. I do not know why it is so small.
Colin, it is a terrifying feedback loop, and from what I see, it won't be interrupted, with a terrifying and bleak outcome on individuals. We are only beginning to see the outcomes of what what you precisely term " the largest, most uncontrolled neurological experiment in human history" on children, who have no say in it. It is parents' responsibility to protect their children.
And we do see outcomes already with preschoolers who can't maintain even a focus on playing. It is unbelievably tragic that studies are demonstrating how their brains are being affected, perhaps permanently, as it impacts neuron development, and yet, that knowledge is not in the public arena.
I wonder how these children will react at 20 years old when they discover that some of their life issues stem from being exposed to what by then may be known to be as possibly as permanent as fetal alcohol syndrome is on pre-born babies.
There are days I feel a deep grief pondering this.
Wow, Wendy what a connection with 'fetal alcohol syndrome'. that is the best connection i have heard for this disease. When I stay in hotels with Sophie this is exactly what I see at the breakfast tables, parents who are addicts passing the addiction to children, this is an epidemic.
Your personal discipline is exactly the same as mine. "Printed material only" after 8 PM is the very definition of building a cognitive sanctuary. You are actively curating your own mental environment. This is no small thing.
You are right to feel that "deep grief." It is not an overreaction; it is the only rational response to the evidence you are citing. The tragedy is precisely as you have framed it.
That observation about preschoolers is the "canary in the coal mine." The Wong study looks at adults, but you are pointing to the inception of the problem. When a child "can't maintain even a focus on playing," they are losing the very mechanism by which they build a mind in the first place.
The parallel to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is terrifyingly apt. It frames this not as a "bad habit" but as a form of developmental neurotoxicity. And it perfectly tees up your question: what is the reckoning when this generation, damaged without its consent, grows up to understand what was taken from them?
When I pick Sophie up from school, I see children (10 years old) run to the security desk to pick up their phones, I ask her if she needs to pick up her phone and she says "no, I did not bring it" then I smile inside from my heart.
I spend quite a bit of screen time on my job in addition to spending time working with AI. Not medical advice, but my wife and I have stumbled on our solution against societal driven EMF. Thee are devices which emit pulsed EMF within biological energy bands. There are many commercially available on the market which one might find useful. A popular one is BEMER. We have gravitated towards FSM. We take an epsom salt bath and soak with frequencies by putting the leads in the bath water. You sleep like a baby afterwards. We do it weekly.
Hi James, I also spend a fair amount of time on screens, as I research and study material extensively.
These devices are interesting. I frequently use a TENS machine, but my understanding is that the FSM has a deeper impulsing so that it will target deeper tissues Thank you for the suggestion.
Yes. Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) and the like are all considered microcurrent devices. Unlike TENS units which delivers a thousand times more energy, hence the muscle stimulation, these devices emit frequencies that are in the microamps/microtesla ranges. There is hardly any muscle stimulation at all. The frequences are square wave (as opposed to sine waves) and are low frequencies (1 to 999 hz) and are programmable. The thought is that each frequency set or pairs have specific biologic effects and can be modulated depending on needs. The low frequencies allow for the penetration throughout the body. That's not to say that higher frequencies all the way to terahertz (visible light ranges) do not have biologic effects. They do, but their penetration is fairly shallow, with the exception of gigahertz ranges. Russian investigators believe that those actions at a distance occur via bioactive (acupuncture) points. So one can see how modern society exposing us to random radiation can serve to scramble biologic intercommunications at 60 hz and higher. Pure signals can result in stronger effects. In the US how the frequencies were found began with Albert Abrams and his experiments back in 1890's. However, Carol McMakin, the founder, has a book called "The Resonance Effect" which is essentially a biography of her career if you wish to explore it further. She has also published a compelling clinical trial in humans that is a cytokine study:
https://www.bodyworkmovementtherapies.com/article/S1360-8592(05)00008-2/ppt
She still teaches her courses. Best wishes!
Thank you James for this :-)