A new neurological condition is about to sweep through our population of young people. It’s called digital dementia, and, as its name suggests, it refers to a cognitive decline that is caused by an excessive immersion in screen reality. And unlike what we traditionally conceive of with regards to dementia, this is an early-onset dementia and not an old age dementia. I was interested in reading about this condition because it fits in very well with some of the concepts that I have developed on a philosophical level for this column.
I have talked about the fact that people in more traditional natural societies lived in fields of experience that were filled with the organic stimulation for which their nervous systems were made. Unfortunately, among the sources of organic stimuli to be found in these traditional natural environments were perishable experiences like wild animals, poisonous plants, drought, famine, floods, mudslides, extreme cold spells, extreme heat spells, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, etc. These were sources of flowing natural continual organic stimuli that people were capable of absorbing, but which, nevertheless, were extremely dangerous and even lethal.
So, people started developing technological solutions to this dangerous organic stimulation. In effect, they tried to superimpose a technological field of experience over their more traditional natural field of experience. Which was fine in terms of protecting people from the perishable dangers of a traditional natural field of experience. But in creating a modern technological living environment, people became vulnerable to another set of dangers derived from sensory distortion. The understimulation of a frictionless mediated vacuum environment and the overstimulation from all of the sensory waste products that resulted from creating all the frictionless mediated spaces. So, unfortunately, different kinds of dangers replaced the dangers from the traditional natural environment.
The dangers today come in the form of vacuum and tension-pocket environments. Vast understimulating spaces filled with an experiential vacuum and, at the same time, filled with tension-pockets of overstimulating entities. And to survive in such an environment, people’s nervous systems have had to be reconfigured in order to be able to, at least, partly absorb the new kinds of stimulation. Their minds are transformed by having to live in sensory distortion in such a way that they then have difficulty absorbing the organic stimulation, the primary experience that they truly need to feel fully alive. And, at that point, rather than being able to respond in a healthy way to organic stimulation when it presents itself, they are instead only able to continue to respond to the abrasive aspects of overstimulating tension-pockets as a means of pulling themselves out of the living death of the experiential vacuum. The organic stimulation is ignored, blocked out, pushed away or, at best, mixed in with the overstimulating tension-pocket stimulation.
In the earlier articles for this column, the focus was precisely on sensory distortion rather than just numbness and the experiential vacuum. By sensory distortion, I mean to signal the combination of overstimulation and understimulation that all people have to deal with in modern technological society. If I have shifted my focus to one side of this equation, namely understimulation, it is because everyone today is aware of manifestations of abrasive overstimulation, whether overcrowded modern urban areas, noise pollution, air pollution, speeding vehicles, and grating electronic musical instruments. Few people today are capable of grasping the notion that our lives are incredibly influenced in a negative way by states of existence that are extremely frictionless and extremely mediated. States of existence that we really don’t feel. In other words, states of numbness.
Now the way that I perceive digital dementia, as it has been discussed by doctors and scientists, it seems like it is caused by a field of experience that is simultaneously understimulating and overstimulating. It is understimulating as a result of the frictionless processes involved in operating the machines with the screens. It is quite frictionless to press on the different keys involved in operating a computer. It is also understimulating to see everything that is happening of meaning in one’s life pass before one on a computer screen. Or rather, behind a computer screen. Rather than live one’s life filled with immediate experience, primary experience, vibrant experience, one lives one’s life practically totally in terms of mediated experience. Numbing experience.
On the other hand, life today is overstimulating as a result of the actual content portrayed on the screen. All the different data and pieces of information displayed can be very overstimulating. Too many defined discrete entities for a person to be able to absorb effectively. Then there is the cyberbullying that kids get involved in. This is a form of overstimulation that can be downright traumatic. Finally, there is the adult-style content that young people tap into. Trading nude pictures of one another as well as pornography. And then there is the involvement of young people in hate groups and even terrorist organizations. All these different kinds of content are very intense for young people and can lead to mental confusion and loss of focus, both of which are means by which the mind can tolerate the intensity. The confusion and loss of focus allow for the mind to break up the intensity of the stimuli and, in so doing, make the stimuli more tolerable.
Returning to the central topic of this article, it is thus not just the technological format itself, the digital technology, that is pushing young people to digital dementia as a result of the experiential vacuum in which they are living. It is also the abrasive tension-pocket content that so overstimulates, so overwhelms young people that it drives them to eventually withdraw from the external world. And here I am not just talking about psychologically, but neurologically.
So, with the understimulation of the digital format and the overstimulation of the digital content, young people on digital media constantly bounce back and forth between the extremes hoping to find a level of stimulation in between that approximates, if nothing else, the level of intensity of the average organic stimulation experience. But there is no stability of intensity of stimulation in the middle with digital media. And going back and forth between the stimulation of digital format and digital content is so destabilizing that it also causes people to break away from external world reality. Hence, digital dementia.
© 2023 Laurence Mesirow