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Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload
An award-winning neurologist on the Stone-Age roots of our screen addictions, and what to do about them.The human brain hasn’t changed much since the Stone Age, let alone in the mere thirty years of the Screen Age. That’s why, according to neurologist Richard Cytowic—who, Oliver Sacks observed, “changed the way we think of the human brain”—our brains are so poorly equipped to resist the incursions of Big They are programmed for the wildly different needs of a prehistoric world. In Your Stone-Age Brain in the Screen Age, Cytowic explains exactly how this programming works—from the brain’s point of view. What he reveals in this book shows why we are easily addicted to screen devices, why young, developing brains are particularly vulnerable, why we need silence, and what we can do to push back. In the engaging storytelling style of his popular TED Talk, Cytowic draws an easily comprehensible picture of the Stone-Age brain’s workings—the function of neurotransmitters like dopamine in basic instincts for survival such as wanting and reward; the role of comparison in emotion, and emotion in competition; and, most significantly, the orienting reflex, one of the unconscious circuits that automatically focus, shift, and sustain attention. In light of this picture, the nature of our susceptibility to digital devices becomes clear, along with the possibility of how to break their spell. Full of practical actions that we can start taking right away, Your Stone-Age Brain in the Screen Age is compelling evidence that we can change the way we use technology, resist its addictive power over us, and take back the control we have lost.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 2024
About the author
Richard E. Cytowic
12 books107 followersRichard E. Cytowic, MD, MFA is a neurologist best know for bringing synesthesia back into the scientific mainstream in 1980. The trait of crossed senses is now seen as important to understanding how brains perceive.
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (with David Eagleman) won the 2011 Montaigne Medal.
Cytowic also writes non-fiction and fiction, and received his MFA in creative writing from American University. The Pulitzer nominee's work has appeared in The Washingtonian, New Scientist, and the New York Times Magazine.
His Blog at Psychology Today is The Fallible Mind: Emotion, perception, and other tricks of the brain
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (with David Eagleman) won the 2011 Montaigne Medal.
Cytowic also writes non-fiction and fiction, and received his MFA in creative writing from American University. The Pulitzer nominee's work has appeared in The Washingtonian, New Scientist, and the New York Times Magazine.
His Blog at Psychology Today is The Fallible Mind: Emotion, perception, and other tricks of the brain
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 5, 2025
Ok Computer
Che il costante permanere attaccati agli schermi- del cellulare in primis- non sia un'abitudine virtuosa è il buon senso (antichissima forma di saggezza, ora avvertita come polverosa e demodé) a suggerirlo.
Questo saggio ben scritto e chiaro anche quando parla di neuroscienza e ricadute cerebrali della dipendenza da schermi, però, acclara- dati alla mano, corredati di un'imponete bibliografia- il mutamento antropologico in atto.
Concetti come autismo digitale, ansia da separazione (dai devices), depressione e ansia si connettono in una rete, ironicamente dipendente dalla Rete.
Molto ci sarebbe da dire, molti i dati che mi hanno colpito (culle con schermi incorporati; scuole Waldorf senza connessioni per i figli dei magnati della Silicon Valley; ricadute a lungo raggio dell'aver perso l'uso del corsivo...e molte altre cose che sembrano antichissimi retaggi di un tempo che fu, ma che hanno prodotto e producono conseguenze) e per i quali mi sembra che questo saggio- molto fuori dalla mia bolla solita e per il quale ringrazio chi me lo ha suggerito- vada letto: soprattutto da parte dei genitori e/o di chi lavora con i bambini, coi giovani, nella formazione. Senza la prosopopea di considerarci immuni, noi adulti: anzi, almeno nel mio modestissimo caso. Il nuovo proposito, maturato a seguito della lettura, è quello di vedere le persone: e di spegnere lo smartphone, quando sono con loro.
Che il costante permanere attaccati agli schermi- del cellulare in primis- non sia un'abitudine virtuosa è il buon senso (antichissima forma di saggezza, ora avvertita come polverosa e demodé) a suggerirlo.
Questo saggio ben scritto e chiaro anche quando parla di neuroscienza e ricadute cerebrali della dipendenza da schermi, però, acclara- dati alla mano, corredati di un'imponete bibliografia- il mutamento antropologico in atto.
Concetti come autismo digitale, ansia da separazione (dai devices), depressione e ansia si connettono in una rete, ironicamente dipendente dalla Rete.
Molto ci sarebbe da dire, molti i dati che mi hanno colpito (culle con schermi incorporati; scuole Waldorf senza connessioni per i figli dei magnati della Silicon Valley; ricadute a lungo raggio dell'aver perso l'uso del corsivo...e molte altre cose che sembrano antichissimi retaggi di un tempo che fu, ma che hanno prodotto e producono conseguenze) e per i quali mi sembra che questo saggio- molto fuori dalla mia bolla solita e per il quale ringrazio chi me lo ha suggerito- vada letto: soprattutto da parte dei genitori e/o di chi lavora con i bambini, coi giovani, nella formazione. Senza la prosopopea di considerarci immuni, noi adulti: anzi, almeno nel mio modestissimo caso. Il nuovo proposito, maturato a seguito della lettura, è quello di vedere le persone: e di spegnere lo smartphone, quando sono con loro.
December 25, 2025
When I picked up this book, I was already on board with Cytowic's argument--I wanted to learn more about how technology could be contributing to my fatigue. Unfortunately, this manuscript is a mess on the book, chapter, and sometimes even paragraph level. Shockingly so, because to be a scientist the author had to master laying out his thoughts in order.
For example, take chapter 18. In good news, it recaps in bullet list form all the facts and arguments Cytowic cycled through at nauseam in chapters 1-17. (Really though, why make it 17 different chapters if you will cover the same thing in each one).
In bad news, the bullet list was actually supposed to be a list of things "you can do for yourself" to cope with technology. Some bullet points were about that, like "don't use technology while you eat" or "talk to people in person or on the phone." ("Read books" is bullet point 4 and then again 7, for some reason.)
But more than half of the bullet points is things like "Two separate networks lie behind reward and pleasure. ... Unfortunately, addictions that successfully commandeer the dopamine network can alter it permanently for the worse." Sir, did you forget what you were supposed to be talking about?
The rest of the book similarly resembles a first draft. It needed some cleaning up and structuring. Even though I agreed with the author's ideas, I was constantly annoyed when reading.
PS. This is not the place to critique the actual arguments in the book, nor do I have the training to do so, but one detailed made my social historian blood boil. The biggest message in this book is that children shouldn't be exposed to technology at an early age. Cytowic brings up socioeconomic reasons for parents to over-rely on technology exactly once (pp. 226-228). And this reason is that less affluent parents "haven't yet heard the alarms." Really? You could not think of any other contributors?
For example, take chapter 18. In good news, it recaps in bullet list form all the facts and arguments Cytowic cycled through at nauseam in chapters 1-17. (Really though, why make it 17 different chapters if you will cover the same thing in each one).
In bad news, the bullet list was actually supposed to be a list of things "you can do for yourself" to cope with technology. Some bullet points were about that, like "don't use technology while you eat" or "talk to people in person or on the phone." ("Read books" is bullet point 4 and then again 7, for some reason.)
But more than half of the bullet points is things like "Two separate networks lie behind reward and pleasure. ... Unfortunately, addictions that successfully commandeer the dopamine network can alter it permanently for the worse." Sir, did you forget what you were supposed to be talking about?
The rest of the book similarly resembles a first draft. It needed some cleaning up and structuring. Even though I agreed with the author's ideas, I was constantly annoyed when reading.
PS. This is not the place to critique the actual arguments in the book, nor do I have the training to do so, but one detailed made my social historian blood boil. The biggest message in this book is that children shouldn't be exposed to technology at an early age. Cytowic brings up socioeconomic reasons for parents to over-rely on technology exactly once (pp. 226-228). And this reason is that less affluent parents "haven't yet heard the alarms." Really? You could not think of any other contributors?
November 23, 2024
This book is for anyone who knows that their relationship with technology is toxic. If you are on the fence about leaving social media, disabling notifications, or making any other changes in your technical consumption, this book will help you pull the trigger and reach freedom.
April 12, 2026
I'm exhausted from all the highlighting I was doing while reading this book, haha. Oh the irony of reading it on my Kindle app on my Iphone and now writing a review that is posted online. Reading this, I felt like someone complaining about their weight while eating a sleeve of Thin Mint cookies. I'm cranky about my behavior yet here I am, still doing it.
If you pick up this book to read, then you are already aware of what is going on and you feel concern. I kept thinking, the people who most need to read this book never will because their attention span is too jacked up to read an entire book. Sigh. It is a conundrum, that's for sure. Reading this did help me strengthen my attempts at changing my digital behaviors. I am a work in progress, that's for sure.
The writing style and structure of this book was rather stilted and repetitive. I couldn't rate it more than 3 stars for that reason, even though the subject matter itself is 5 stars.
ALL THE QUOTES. I need them so I can go back to this review as a refresher and remind myself why I need to minimize my time online.
The winners of tomorrow will be those who can focus and sustain their attention for long periods of time.
Addictive screen media now constitute a slave economy with users as the labor. Advertisers are the paying customer, social networks and media platforms are the store, and your eyeballs and brains are the commodity on offer. If something is free to use, that means YOU are the product being sold.
Users do not appreciate how heavy an energy cost screen distractions exact on their Stone Age brain, which biology limits by the fixed amount of energy it has available. The cognitive load imposed by screen devices degrades attention, memory, and thinking, along with sleep, mood & concentration.
devotion to digital devices sacrifices first-hand experiences
A growing proportion of the population seems to be drifting through life, looking at their screens but not seeing what is going on around them.
In the same way that you exercise a muscle, reading strengthens your ability to focus and resist the intrusions that media companies have become deft at hurling your way. Linear reading builds emotional muscles, too. Individuals who habitually read fiction or narrative nonfiction have greater empathy than those who are not regular readers. Narrative requires you to impute motives and intentions, anticipate a character's actions, and predict upcoming turns of plot.
social media competes with in-person engagement and interferes with the development of
emotional circuits necessary to read other people.
The more time you spend in front of a screen the more reinforced the behavior becomes. The intermittent reinforcement (of social media) is a far more powerful force in shaping behavior than straightforward rewards or punishments.
surfing the internet encourages shallow gulps of the data stream, not critical thinking, while offloading factoids to external apps like Google leaves users with little common knowledge and thus few dots to connect. A mind capable of ascertaining connections thrives on quiet, not the internet.
The mind needs stretches of calm.Creativity thrives in it.
Digital onslaught has left many people no longer able to tolerate silence, mental quiet, or being alone with their thoughts. Instead, they soothe themselves with their phone. Like a security blanket it may assuage anxiety, but at the long-term cost of peace of mind.
If you are always taking pictures, how much do you honestly see what is in front of you? Chances are high that you are looking but not seeing when occupied in picture taking, focused on getting it right so that the image is good enough to post online.
Taking a large cache of pictures endows each of them with equal weight, and when everything is important, then nothing is important.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings admitted that sleep was the company's top competitor. He wasn't concerned about Hulu, Amazon Prime, or HBO Max siphoning off profits. "Think about it, when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. We're competing with sleep, on the margin ... and we're winning!" Binge-watching supplants hours normally devoted to fitness, socializing, and sleep.
A steady dose of distractions that emphasize sensation over thought
We react to other people's perceptions instead of living our own life, and this atrophies our coping skills and reserves of resilience.
Sustained attention is the ability to focus on something for an extended period. Selective attention speaks to the aptitude for filtering out competing distractions to stick with the task at hand. Alternating attention is the capacity to switch from one task to another and back again to where you left off.
The best way to reset one's state of mind is to turn off your devices, put them away, and go outside for a walk.
Users who insist that their habit isn't a problem usually put forth the following four general arguments. Rationalization 1: It's just a matter of willpower and people are free to choose. Rebuttal: The forces that ensnare users are inapparent and unconscious. Rationalization 2: It's not a drug, it's just a tool.Rebuttal: This rationalization relies on the illusion of self-control and downplays the negative costs of digital distractions. The illusion of having self-restraint actually promotes impulsive behavior.Rationalization 3: We always adapt to new technology.Rebuttal: Yes, we adapted to trains, electricity, telephones, automobiles, jets, and early computers. computer processing power has increased a trillion-fold while over millennia our Stone Age brain hasn't evolved at all. No artifact in human history has evolved even a fraction as rapidly as modern handheld devices.Rationalization 4: I can stop anytime. "I can stop anytime" is the exact language used by individuals addicted to alcohol, gambling, recreational drugs, and pornography.
Today's cheapest prepaid burner phone is far more powerful than the 1960s Apollo rocket guidance computer
"The medium is the message," tells us not to scrutinize the information a delivery system conveys but the way in which that system manipulates our perception. If we allow vested parties to choose for us and do not demand to know what they are doing to us, then we are passive, apathetic participants
Berating yourself for time wasted online is counterproductive because shame and anger strongly predict relapsing into the very behavior you say you want to stop.
Creative people don't necessarily know more facts; they can connect more dots because they see more dots than others do. They are attentive; their mind is open and receptive. Creative minds need space in which to wander without an agenda. Yet "the distraction-industrial complex" does exactly the opposite
It is remarkable how much people obsess over what foods they put in their bodies but why aren't they as picky about what they ingest through the senses? It has become impossible to find a quiet seat in a waiting room, a doctor's office, or an airport lounge without tv and piped-in music assailing us.
High-definition screens spew out visual noise, beckoning us to turn from whatever we are doing and LOOK HERE. Silence has become the ultimate luxury.
From a psychological point of view, silence is more than the absence of sound. It is a singular mental space. But listening to your inner self is impossible when newsfeeds, notifications, and the infinite scroll constantly address you and hold you hostage.
When you are unpracticed at taking a pause, being suddenly alone with your thoughts can indeed feel frightening.
a live social interaction situation induces remarkable learning in 9-month-old infants, but no learning occurs when the exact same language material is presented to infants by a screen.Children learn from person-to-person interaction, a physical type of engagement that an iPad can never approximate. Digital personalities and screen animations speak at a viewer, not with them
Rapt by their own curated image, teens do not use social media to communicate but to project and promote an ideal self that has little grounding in reality. The average teen now spends six to nine hours a day online. These are nine hours are spent not engaged with others and not understanding points of view other than their own.
If we don't allow ourselves vigorous daytime exposure to sunlight, our brain becomes overly sensitive to the short wavelengths that predominate at twilight, mistakenly telling us to
"wake up" when exposed to the bright, short-wave light thrown off by the devices we use in the evening
You can never win if you habitually compare yourself upward to those better off. For peace of mind, try a time-tested strategy and instead compare yourself downward. The simple expedient of downward comparison can profoundly change your perspective and help alleviate the FOMO that you aren't living as fabulous a life as the people you see online. What?!?! I am so fascinated he suggests this, I thought comparison was the thief of joy.
The whole purpose of Zen meditation is to address the existential dissatisfaction inherent in being alive. Because desire is insatiable, we cycle endlessly from craving to action to discontent and back again, never satisfied for long with what we already have. This insight is the basis of Zen's prescription for detachment.
The ability to disdain something yet still want it illustrates the magnificent human capacity to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts and feelings.
If you pick up this book to read, then you are already aware of what is going on and you feel concern. I kept thinking, the people who most need to read this book never will because their attention span is too jacked up to read an entire book. Sigh. It is a conundrum, that's for sure. Reading this did help me strengthen my attempts at changing my digital behaviors. I am a work in progress, that's for sure.
The writing style and structure of this book was rather stilted and repetitive. I couldn't rate it more than 3 stars for that reason, even though the subject matter itself is 5 stars.
ALL THE QUOTES. I need them so I can go back to this review as a refresher and remind myself why I need to minimize my time online.
The winners of tomorrow will be those who can focus and sustain their attention for long periods of time.
Addictive screen media now constitute a slave economy with users as the labor. Advertisers are the paying customer, social networks and media platforms are the store, and your eyeballs and brains are the commodity on offer. If something is free to use, that means YOU are the product being sold.
Users do not appreciate how heavy an energy cost screen distractions exact on their Stone Age brain, which biology limits by the fixed amount of energy it has available. The cognitive load imposed by screen devices degrades attention, memory, and thinking, along with sleep, mood & concentration.
devotion to digital devices sacrifices first-hand experiences
A growing proportion of the population seems to be drifting through life, looking at their screens but not seeing what is going on around them.
In the same way that you exercise a muscle, reading strengthens your ability to focus and resist the intrusions that media companies have become deft at hurling your way. Linear reading builds emotional muscles, too. Individuals who habitually read fiction or narrative nonfiction have greater empathy than those who are not regular readers. Narrative requires you to impute motives and intentions, anticipate a character's actions, and predict upcoming turns of plot.
social media competes with in-person engagement and interferes with the development of
emotional circuits necessary to read other people.
The more time you spend in front of a screen the more reinforced the behavior becomes. The intermittent reinforcement (of social media) is a far more powerful force in shaping behavior than straightforward rewards or punishments.
surfing the internet encourages shallow gulps of the data stream, not critical thinking, while offloading factoids to external apps like Google leaves users with little common knowledge and thus few dots to connect. A mind capable of ascertaining connections thrives on quiet, not the internet.
The mind needs stretches of calm.Creativity thrives in it.
Digital onslaught has left many people no longer able to tolerate silence, mental quiet, or being alone with their thoughts. Instead, they soothe themselves with their phone. Like a security blanket it may assuage anxiety, but at the long-term cost of peace of mind.
If you are always taking pictures, how much do you honestly see what is in front of you? Chances are high that you are looking but not seeing when occupied in picture taking, focused on getting it right so that the image is good enough to post online.
Taking a large cache of pictures endows each of them with equal weight, and when everything is important, then nothing is important.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings admitted that sleep was the company's top competitor. He wasn't concerned about Hulu, Amazon Prime, or HBO Max siphoning off profits. "Think about it, when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. We're competing with sleep, on the margin ... and we're winning!" Binge-watching supplants hours normally devoted to fitness, socializing, and sleep.
A steady dose of distractions that emphasize sensation over thought
We react to other people's perceptions instead of living our own life, and this atrophies our coping skills and reserves of resilience.
Sustained attention is the ability to focus on something for an extended period. Selective attention speaks to the aptitude for filtering out competing distractions to stick with the task at hand. Alternating attention is the capacity to switch from one task to another and back again to where you left off.
The best way to reset one's state of mind is to turn off your devices, put them away, and go outside for a walk.
Users who insist that their habit isn't a problem usually put forth the following four general arguments. Rationalization 1: It's just a matter of willpower and people are free to choose. Rebuttal: The forces that ensnare users are inapparent and unconscious. Rationalization 2: It's not a drug, it's just a tool.Rebuttal: This rationalization relies on the illusion of self-control and downplays the negative costs of digital distractions. The illusion of having self-restraint actually promotes impulsive behavior.Rationalization 3: We always adapt to new technology.Rebuttal: Yes, we adapted to trains, electricity, telephones, automobiles, jets, and early computers. computer processing power has increased a trillion-fold while over millennia our Stone Age brain hasn't evolved at all. No artifact in human history has evolved even a fraction as rapidly as modern handheld devices.Rationalization 4: I can stop anytime. "I can stop anytime" is the exact language used by individuals addicted to alcohol, gambling, recreational drugs, and pornography.
Today's cheapest prepaid burner phone is far more powerful than the 1960s Apollo rocket guidance computer
"The medium is the message," tells us not to scrutinize the information a delivery system conveys but the way in which that system manipulates our perception. If we allow vested parties to choose for us and do not demand to know what they are doing to us, then we are passive, apathetic participants
Berating yourself for time wasted online is counterproductive because shame and anger strongly predict relapsing into the very behavior you say you want to stop.
Creative people don't necessarily know more facts; they can connect more dots because they see more dots than others do. They are attentive; their mind is open and receptive. Creative minds need space in which to wander without an agenda. Yet "the distraction-industrial complex" does exactly the opposite
It is remarkable how much people obsess over what foods they put in their bodies but why aren't they as picky about what they ingest through the senses? It has become impossible to find a quiet seat in a waiting room, a doctor's office, or an airport lounge without tv and piped-in music assailing us.
High-definition screens spew out visual noise, beckoning us to turn from whatever we are doing and LOOK HERE. Silence has become the ultimate luxury.
From a psychological point of view, silence is more than the absence of sound. It is a singular mental space. But listening to your inner self is impossible when newsfeeds, notifications, and the infinite scroll constantly address you and hold you hostage.
When you are unpracticed at taking a pause, being suddenly alone with your thoughts can indeed feel frightening.
a live social interaction situation induces remarkable learning in 9-month-old infants, but no learning occurs when the exact same language material is presented to infants by a screen.Children learn from person-to-person interaction, a physical type of engagement that an iPad can never approximate. Digital personalities and screen animations speak at a viewer, not with them
Rapt by their own curated image, teens do not use social media to communicate but to project and promote an ideal self that has little grounding in reality. The average teen now spends six to nine hours a day online. These are nine hours are spent not engaged with others and not understanding points of view other than their own.
If we don't allow ourselves vigorous daytime exposure to sunlight, our brain becomes overly sensitive to the short wavelengths that predominate at twilight, mistakenly telling us to
"wake up" when exposed to the bright, short-wave light thrown off by the devices we use in the evening
You can never win if you habitually compare yourself upward to those better off. For peace of mind, try a time-tested strategy and instead compare yourself downward. The simple expedient of downward comparison can profoundly change your perspective and help alleviate the FOMO that you aren't living as fabulous a life as the people you see online. What?!?! I am so fascinated he suggests this, I thought comparison was the thief of joy.
The whole purpose of Zen meditation is to address the existential dissatisfaction inherent in being alive. Because desire is insatiable, we cycle endlessly from craving to action to discontent and back again, never satisfied for long with what we already have. This insight is the basis of Zen's prescription for detachment.
The ability to disdain something yet still want it illustrates the magnificent human capacity to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts and feelings.
December 1, 2024
If I could write a book on this subject (which I have considered) it wouldn’t look much different to this. I’ve said for a while that for all the good technology can do, it’s coming at a consequence for the next generation. The danger is that we stop evolving and actually devolve if we continue down this path of instant gratification, digital overload and screen addiction. Enjoyed the book - affirmed much of what I believe.
March 24, 2026
An incredible book. Dr. Cytowic tosses the easy moral judgement: "Screens are bad" and instead probes us to take a scientific approach - "What impact does blue light from screens have on our circadian rhythm? How does Ipad/smartphone use impact empathy and learning in children and infants?" or roughly along those lines.
We have reached a staggering omnipresence of "smart" devices today. The recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (which the author does not touch on unfortunately) brings to question: how much of today's brainpower do we want to outsource to machines? Is there harm in an AI generated cover letter? or does it start there?
Cytowic explains how our "stone age" brains evolved to analyze for novelty in our environment (colors, changes) and how tech companies use this in their greedy ploy to advertise to our eyeballs every second.
After reading this book I purchased the Brick (not an ad lol) a device that allows you to restrict certain apps of your choice( like instagram) for time periods until you physically tap your phone to this block. It has helped me immensely. I ended up getting a flip phone and leaving my old iphone at home to use as a tablet essentially.
We have reached a staggering omnipresence of "smart" devices today. The recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (which the author does not touch on unfortunately) brings to question: how much of today's brainpower do we want to outsource to machines? Is there harm in an AI generated cover letter? or does it start there?
Cytowic explains how our "stone age" brains evolved to analyze for novelty in our environment (colors, changes) and how tech companies use this in their greedy ploy to advertise to our eyeballs every second.
After reading this book I purchased the Brick (not an ad lol) a device that allows you to restrict certain apps of your choice( like instagram) for time periods until you physically tap your phone to this block. It has helped me immensely. I ended up getting a flip phone and leaving my old iphone at home to use as a tablet essentially.
November 14, 2024
While his points are valid, they assume all negative impacts of devices with the precedent that our brains are not equipped to handle this screen age. The future will in fact have more technology, not prioritize memorization and provide the ability to learn at at earlier age if we allow it. While it’s true that devices build the instant gratification vs encouraging meaningful experiences and some believe this ultimately gave rise to the recreational drug epidemic, we might benefit from embracing this age vs pushing it away. Devices will actually be more of an extension of the human brain in the future and I think we need to focus on figuring out how to incorporate this new tool more successfully. I appreciate the authors perspective and knew what it was going on but I heard a lot more opportunity in his writing than downsides to the screen age.
January 13, 2025
The book touches on many great points about how our brain is unprepared to all the screens and the swirl of information coming from there.
I also hope that research on how much learning to write with your hands even in this digital age is detrimental to a child's development can reach more parents. My mum's a teacher and she can see the effects of this on a large scale in school.
This book however, just like all the other pop science books out there, could have been well enough as a longer video or article.
I also hope that research on how much learning to write with your hands even in this digital age is detrimental to a child's development can reach more parents. My mum's a teacher and she can see the effects of this on a large scale in school.
This book however, just like all the other pop science books out there, could have been well enough as a longer video or article.
December 2, 2024
The idea that people are forming emotional attachments to their devices and treating them as extensions of themselves reflects a significant cultural and psychological shift in the digital era. . As technology has become an integral part of daily life, our smartphones, tablets, and other devices are no longer just tools; they have become companions, memory keepers, and personal assistants.
This book is like a wake up call.
This book is like a wake up call.
August 24, 2025
Allungare il brodo…
Poteva scrivere molte meno pagine. Certe cose sono interessanti, per altre non posso fare altri che consigliargli un buon neurologo. Inutile che cerchi di rendersi simpatico.
Per me ha perso tutta la sua credibilità quando ha parlato di DNA spazzatura, argomento che ha portato la sua presunta esperienza ad un livello di età della pietra. Non credevo di dover sentire ancora parlare nel 2025 di Junk DNA o presunti ex-organi spazzatura che sono inutilmente nel corpo “perché l’evoluzione così”. Sti tizio si è messo a prendere in giro chi credeva che il cervello utilizzasse solo il 10% del suo potenziale, per poi cadere in altre similie ca**ate.. Quando non sa come spiegare qualcosa, si appella al fatto che “l’evoluzione ha agito così” come se fosse un entità metafisica che debba orientare l’umano al suo migliore sviluppo possibile. Cambiate tutti queste arrampicate sugli specchi con “Dio” e vi accorgerete che indiscepoli del suo credo hanno semplicemente creato un nuovo concetto astratto senza prove dandosi pure autorità.
Non ho potuto fare a meno ad un certo punto di prendere il libro e buttarlo in un cestino, nonostante l’argomento sembrasse interessante, siccome è quello il suo ambiente ideale.
Poteva scrivere molte meno pagine. Certe cose sono interessanti, per altre non posso fare altri che consigliargli un buon neurologo. Inutile che cerchi di rendersi simpatico.
Per me ha perso tutta la sua credibilità quando ha parlato di DNA spazzatura, argomento che ha portato la sua presunta esperienza ad un livello di età della pietra. Non credevo di dover sentire ancora parlare nel 2025 di Junk DNA o presunti ex-organi spazzatura che sono inutilmente nel corpo “perché l’evoluzione così”. Sti tizio si è messo a prendere in giro chi credeva che il cervello utilizzasse solo il 10% del suo potenziale, per poi cadere in altre similie ca**ate.. Quando non sa come spiegare qualcosa, si appella al fatto che “l’evoluzione ha agito così” come se fosse un entità metafisica che debba orientare l’umano al suo migliore sviluppo possibile. Cambiate tutti queste arrampicate sugli specchi con “Dio” e vi accorgerete che indiscepoli del suo credo hanno semplicemente creato un nuovo concetto astratto senza prove dandosi pure autorità.
Non ho potuto fare a meno ad un certo punto di prendere il libro e buttarlo in un cestino, nonostante l’argomento sembrasse interessante, siccome è quello il suo ambiente ideale.
April 1, 2025
the author knows a lot about the relationship with screens and our bodies including brain. this is a good book that I wanna reread. it can be a bit difficult to read for some people because the author talks about science in a bit difficult way.
February 22, 2026
I just finished a very eye-opening book that made me realize how addicted I still am to my phone (even without social media!) It’s actually pretty scary how much our attention spans have shrunk. It makes me miss when the internet was something you sat down at a computer to use, rather than something that lived in your pocket. I'm definitely striving to make some big lifestyle changes after this one.
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