Thread: Digital Dementia

I have a cousin who is a psychiatrist and she saw the report on Digital Dementia and mentioned it to me as one of my daughters has a really difficult time with long term memory. Someone recently described not only her but most of her classmates as well as having "an inability to learn much through reading and a brain that been conditioned over years of schooling to be a processor rather than a memory."

So, is Digital Dementia going to be the next big thing like ADHD?

Surge in 'digital dementia' - Telegraph
Doctors in South Korea are reporting a surge in "digital dementia" among young people who have become so reliant on electronic devices that they can no longer remember everyday details like their phone numbers.

'Digital dementia,' or decrease in overall cognitive skills hurt youth - UPI.com
Psychiatrist Kim Dae-jin at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital recently diagnosed a 15-year-old boy with symptoms of early onset dementia due to intense exposure to digital technology -- television, computer, smartphone and video games -- since age 5. He could not remember the six-digit keypad code to get into his own home and his memory problems were hurting his grades in school.

"His brain's ability to transfer information to long-term memory has been impaired because of his heavy exposure to digital gadgets," the psychiatrist told the Korea JoongAngDaily.com.

Reminds me of this story, but it's not true:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=11771

Scott

Digital Dementia will be the next formal reason to strip Americans of some cash for ritalin and such.

I tried to find medical explanation of Digital Dementia and couldn't. I think this has yellow paint all over it.

Short uhhhhhhhhhtention span?
I blame TV.
Twitter and text messages are the final symptom of the condition.

Was that too long?

I have noticed I don't try to keep in mind even simple things. I can ask Google anytime, can't I?. Ironically sometimes I can't recollect a proper question.

Active recall* can drastically improve retention and cure Digital Dementia. But “carrots” (pastry, etc) won’t help making “chat box” girls rack their mind so much. Only “sticks” can work in the case. So, you may need to reread “David Copperfield” )))

*Active recall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Before PC era, one had to remember only one phone number (6 digit in my area). Now there are hundreds codes. No one can remember so many of garbage. Hence we should write down our passwords to where there are easily noticeable

If I want to use one of the Internet computers when I'm at the public library, I have to enter my 14-digit "library user card number" at the computer. At first I had to look at my library card to get the number, but I have long since learned it by heart. And I didn't need special mnemonic devices; it sort of became part of my "finger memory" from typing it so many times.

On the other hand, I have great difficulty remembering my own seven-digit mobile phone number, because I never call myself!

Incidentally, some historians and anthropologists claim that widespread literacy and the invention of moveable type reduced the average person's ability to remember verbal information. The argument is that back in the days when most people couldn't read and documents had to be expensively copied by hand, huge amounts of info -- the Bible, the Iliad, Beowulf, and so forth -- were learned by oral recitation and committed to neural memory, not to paper. But the ability to memorize book-length epic poems became increasingly rare with the rise of general literacy. (And this historic process is reversed in Bradbury's Farenheit 451 -- when the government bans and destroys most books, individuals devote themselves to memorizing long texts and becoming "human books.")