When we interact online we engage most of our bodies sensory systems. We don't choose which senses we will engage, we partake in the experience reactively, taking in the virtual reality in real time as though we were dealing with real world situations. Through our use of the 'net and it's various technologies and content, we can experience a wide range of emotion and physical stimulation. We smile while interact with others from across the planet, we become excited when we buy or sell things, we engage our intellect when we share moments and ideas with others, we become aroused when we view sexually explicit content and we feel like dancing when we google our favorite artists new album. The Internet has become a place for us to go to get satisfaction for some our most ancient needs as human animals. The internet has the power to satisfy our human programming without us ever having to leave the comfort of our homes, and it can transport us from wherever we are to somewhere that feels more familiar in a matter of seconds. Everyday, the Internet gets closer to becoming as tangible as the reality around us, and in some ways, it has already replaced it.
But, is this new type of reality something the human animal is prepared for? Is the 'salt and shadow' of our pixel filled screens convincing enough to engage us, and if it is, can we adapt to the internet while maintaining our ability to function in our own, native physical reality?
With all this new found power at our fingertips, we have collectively created a place where the social standards, culture and taboos are more dynamic than ever. One second, we could be reading cutting edge articles about raising genius children, the next, we are scanning the nether regions of google for hardcore porn, and perhaps simultaneously, we are interacting with friends and family via social media. There is no one to tell us we are out of line. We decide what to do with our virtual self, with little repercussion to our real life social circumstances. If we want to know about something, we simply type the words into a search bar. If we want to contact someone, stranger or friend, we merely type in their name and should we wish to see something novel, the video URL is tagged with 20+ relevant keywords for us to find it. The Internet has single handedly changed how we engage this world, and as a result, our brains have had to adapt millions of years of hard wired evolutionary programming. In about two decades, our environment has evolved into a hyperstimulating, unimaginable wealth of information. In order to cope, our brains have had to change thinking patterns and reward pathways in such a way that leaves us starkly different from previous generations. Perhaps, we are becoming too different.
Porn
Ah porn, the single most searched, viewed and downloaded content on the entire Internet. The days of waiting for next month's issue of Penthouse have been replaced with 60 billion high speed, high resolution, fully immersable clips in every imaginable niche, made available within seconds, any time, any day, almost anywhere. Where thousands of years of human evolution have had us exposed to maybe dozens of potential sexual partners, 20 years of high speed internet access now has the average male (or female) able to see more sex acts than you could 'shake a stick at'. And, as it turns out, it is changing our brains in some seriously frightening ways. A quick Google search for 'pornography's effect on the brain' gives you thousands of hits on new studies attesting adverse effects pornography is having on us. You see Ted talks about porn addiction, subbreddits for 20 something year old virgins with porn induced erectile dysfunction and countless studies stating that our brains plasticity just simply can't handle this new form of stimulation. When we adapt to the new hyperstimuating world of porn, we shed our inherited sexuality for a new and dysfunctional libido.
I don't want to call porn users out, nor do I want to hear how anyone manages a normal sexual existence in tandem with their porn use. Not everyone experiences negative effects, that's true...I am not looking to have a 'master debate' about the merits of porn use. I'm merely exemplifing the possibility of negative effects. Everyone experiences porn addiction differently, but it would seem a lot of user don't even realise they have an addiction, and they are completely unaware of the consequences.
In a 'nut'shell, the hyperstimulation experienced when we regularly view high speed porn tricks our brain into producing neurotransmitters at alarming rates, much like cocaine or opium. The addiction type reaction leads to our brain 'pruning' out the lesser used neural pathways, causing us to become immune to normal sexual stimuli, creating dysfunctional sexual health and in extreme cases, causing erectile dysfunction. The effects of porn can be so powerful that without porn, an accustomed brain will actually 'flatline' and shutdown the sex organs, leaving otherwise healthy men with a neurological disorder resulting in impotentence. The research is new, but extensive, and young males who are raised on this new kind of sexual interaction are turning out to be the most sexually dysfunctional generation in history.
Learning and cognitive development
Another rapidly changing brain function caused by internet use is one of our most important: Learning. Gone are the days when we had to spend hours at the library, scouring the bookcases for well researched and reputable hard copy text books and literature. Traditionally, if you wanted to learn about something, or better yet, write about something, you had to find some very good references and dive deep into their depths in order to 'understand' a subject. Nowadays, we can "skim" along the millions of google hits we find, looking for snippets of information related to our subject. We can take little bits from thousands of references, without ever having to read the entire source. This does make for an efficiency unavailable to us even 15 years ago, but it has also changed how our brain absorbs information. Instead of forming large, deep and intricate clusters of well understood concepts, we create a sort of temporary "froth" in our brains of lesser understood concepts that are often out of context with the subject as a whole. The scariest thing is, new studies are now telling us we are losing our ABILITY to learn in the traditional capacity. Using the internet in this fashion leads to impatient, flaccid and temporary attitudes towards our knowledge base. We literally store our 'knowledge' in the cloud, instead of our brains, opting to reference Google for answers rather than retaining the information ourselves 'offline'. Imagine this effect in the developing mind of children in the modern age. The implications are beyond our understanding, and we very well could be creating a human animal who is shedding their inherited capacity for intellect in exchange for a hyperstimulated, over satiated mind. Our children, or children's children could actually replace our traditional concept of understanding with a super efficient understanding of how to extract the information off the 'net anytime they need.
Staying on our side of the screen
Our brains are being rewired at a rate that we don't fully understand. I can see the effects of my internet use changing me rapidly, and I am sure you can too. Perhaps the internet needs to be kept at arms length, or at least, we need to be sure to follow more traditional methods of engaging the world often enough to preserve our ABILITY to function in our physical world without the aid of the internet. Take a step back and ask yourself how REAL the world inside the screen is, how much happiness or health it brings and where exactly it is taking you. When we spread our engagement so thin across so many mediums, we lose the ability to invest our selves in the most valuable thing we have -Reality.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
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I vote for reality!
Thanks @papa-pepper, I have missed this place.
I think reality wins (as @papa-pepper said) or should be at least 50% or more of ones life experience. There are thinks missing from the internet experience that make IRL more potent.
The senses that aren't stimulated are touch, smell, and taste.
Think about the millions of textures associated with one season that is upon us: crunchy leaves, soggy leaves, smooth leaves, slug slime, crisp air, sugary cider donuts, apple cider, leaf piles, apple pie crust, etc. Compared to the buttons on a keyboard, surface of a computer mouse, and screen. There are only so many things where visual representations are ok. It is often the multisensory experiences that form strong memories.
Taste is a world unto itself and goes along with smell. There are few substitutes online for a good smell of a candle. Or the taste of apple crisp and the smooth fruit and cookie crunch that go along with it.
Thanks for the thoughts, very well said! Let's hope those other senses we reserve for real life get used as often as the ones we use n our virtual lives, they are, after all, the most real!