Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Think Apologetics. Tabernacle of David considers this resource trustworthy and Biblically sound.
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How do you keep your sanity in a world that is dominated by texts, memes, tweets, etc. I have found Brett McCracken’s book The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World to have some great insights. He says the following:
” The information bombardment we increasingly face—characterized by nonstop swiping, scrolling, viewing, listening, reading, texting, and multitasking from morning to night—is creating stress in our brains and contributing to rising levels of anxiety. Our brains are shockingly adaptable and resilient, but they have limits. Today’s frenetic information landscape is making our brains busier than ever: the information triage that our over-burdened brains must constantly perform naturally drains huge amounts of energy. Constant multitasking also drains energy. This sort of extreme multitasking, notes neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, overstimulates and stresses our brains:
” Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain. This leads to compromises in both cognitive and physical performance. Among other things, repeated task switching leads to anxiety, which raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which in turn can lead to aggressive and impulsive behaviour.”- “Why the modern world is bad for your brain”- available at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world-bad-for-brain-daniel-j-levitin-organized-mind-information-overload
McCracken goes on to say the following:
“In addition to these numbing and desensitizing effects, the constant hum of our information feeds fragments our lives. Instead of being present with our families, we are present with the hordes demanding our attention on email, text, Voxer, WhatsApp, Messenger, and umpteen other communication platforms. Instead of being present in the places where we live, we are present in the crises across the world and the trending debates on placeless Twitter. Our feeds bring the world and all its chaos into our minds, splitting our attention in a hundred different ways.”
