You are slowly dementing

In our lives over the last 20 years many new electronic products have successfully been introduced. We have embraced them and integrated them in our daily lives. But we never seriously contemplated the side effects and long term consequences.

Now that we have life very much dominated by these electronic products, we have strong reasons not to want to know what are those side effects and consequences. Because if we did truly realize them, we would have to give up to use a cell phone, play computer games, use Facebook, etc.

Frequent television viewing, hours spent at playing computer and violent video games, making incessant phone calls and SMS-texting, the reckless dissemination of personal feelings, thoughts and photos on networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have a negative impact on feelings, thoughts, behavior and social contacts of children and adolescents.

Reputed media scientists and responsible educators, juvenile judges and sorely tried parents of internet-addicted teenagers have been drawing people’s attention to the adverse effects of excessive media use for two decades now.

And now we have Manfred Spitzer.

He is a neuroscientist and medical director of the Psychiatric University Hospital in Ulm, Germany.

Professor Spitzer has collected the scientific evidence on the subject of the consequences of having technological inventions deeply integrated in our lives and his conclusion is: it all drives us and our children mad.

In his book “Digital Dementia” Professor Spitzer explains in a scientific and detailed way how he comes to this conclusion.

What is shocking about “Digital dementia” is that it is not a nutty professor claiming this: Professor Spitzer has collected all the information now available and anybody learning this will have to come to the same conclusion.

We drive ourselves mad and allow the same thing to happen to our kids.

This the world has never seen. But in the end we are all individuals. Every electronic device can be switched on. And can be turned off. It’s all up to you.

Facing the book

Many people have the opinion that social life should not function through Internet.
Using e-mails, Skype and websites like Facebook.
They are even opposed to this new way of socializing and see it as the beginning of the end of a society as we know it.

Undeniably it is essential for people to socialize in person.
To have eye to eye contact and to be in each other's physical presence.
To feel each other.
But this essentiality doesn't exclude socializing through Internet as well.
As an additional social activity.
To do both: to embrace a friend who happens to be in town ànd to have later a long Skype video-image conversation with this friend on the other side of the globe.

One of the remarkable aspects of Facebook is that it has the option to find friends that were lost.
When on the site of Facebook, and registered as a user, one can put in any name and see if that person happens to be with Facebook also.
Facebook has been growing tremendously.
There are more than 500 million active users.
50 % of them log on to Facebook any given day.
An average Facebook user has 130 Facebook friends.
So, it is very likely that a long forgotten friend is with Facebook also and can therefore be found.

In this way several Facebook messages have been received of friends that were lost somehow.
And new communication has started with them.

Like with B.
A beautiful Polish woman with who life was shared for a while twenty years ago.
Living together in Cadaques, Spain and dancing in the Roxy Disco in Amsterdam.
And then suddenly it finished and contact was lost.

Until she sent a Facebook message.
To have dinner last night where memories were shared.

Some memories were remembered jointly.
But some memories were forgotten by the other.

After the memories of the shared life came the telling of the stories that have happened in the twenty years since.
Sharing delicate events in warm friendship.
That has re-started.

And this would not likely have happened if not for Facebook.





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