October 2011 - Advaita Ashrama

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knowledge, especially with the growing challenge
of media technology’s effects on the brain?
Teachers have always struggled to teach their
students how to assimilate knowledge rather
than fall prey to parroting the ideas of others. At
the turn of the twentieth century Vivekananda
warned his Vedanta students: ‘By all this eternal
swallowing it is a wonder that we are not all
dyspeptics. Let us stop, and burn all the books,
and get hold of ourselves and think. You all talk
[about] and get distracted over losing your “individuality”.
You are losing it every moment of
your lives by this eternal swallowing’ (6.64).
Today the problem of ‘eternal swallowing’ is
even greater, especially in those countries beset
by information technology. In 2008 US citizens’
information glut through the media—whether
via television and movies, the Internet, iPods, or
cellphones—was found to be three times greater
per day than in 1960. Recent studies show that
the average American computer users at work
shift their attention about thirty-seven times per
hour—whether by changing windows, checking
e-mails, or opening new programs.19 ‘This nonstop
interactivity is one of the most significant
shifts ever in the human environment,’ Adam
Gazzaley, neuroscientist at the University of California,
warns. ‘We are exposing our brains to an
environment and asking them to do things we
weren’t necessarily evolved to do. We know already
there are consequences’ (ibid.).
How can our brain process this information
glut? It cannot. According to yoga psychology,
‘The powers of the mind are like rays of light
dissipated; when they are concentrated, they illumine,’
Vivekananda explains. ‘This is our only
means of knowledge. Everyone is using it, both
in the external and the internal world; but, for
the [Yoga] psychologist, the same minute observation
has to be directed to the internal world.’ 20
Research in the field of cyberpsychology and
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Prabuddha Bharata
the neurological dynamics of media learning
shows that our ability to focus is now being compromised
by bursts of information—whether
through the earpiece of our cellphone or by
what crosses our range of vision on the computer
screen. Our daily onslaught of information bytes
plays to the primitive human impulse to respond
to immediate opportunities or threats—a stimulation
that provokes excitement comparable to a
‘dopamine squirt’ and, what researchers say, can
be addictive.21 Furthermore, all our juggling of emails,
phone calls, and other incoming information
has produced a generation of multi taskers,
many of whom claim that multitasking makes
them more productive. But research shows the
opposite: heavy multitaskers have more trouble
focusing and shutting out irrelevant information
and therefore experience more stress, scientists
confirm (ibid.). In fact, even after their
multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of
focus persists. Our brains are becoming rewired,
researchers say, so that this is now our brain off
computers and away from cellphones.
Media research says, however, that teachers
and students can benefit from certain side effects
of media learning. Imaging studies show
that the brains of the Internet users can become
more efficient at finding information, and that
the players of some video games develop better
visual acuity. But if teachers and parents want
to develop students’ power of thought via TV
media, they need to guide their viewing—especially
children—by teaching them critical viewing
skills and how to distinguish TV fantasy
from reality. This selective viewing causes a shift
from an impulsive to a more reflective intellectual
perspective and increases non-verbal IQ in
students.22 More important still is that parents
and teachers never allow electronic media to
take the place of reading and writing, at home
or in the classroom.
PB October 2011