Thinking Surfing: Boiled frogs in the digital wave

When you start thinking about business idea, next moment, your phone will ring every 3 minutes. It will be from Slack, Twitter, Message from friends, news app and even dating app. Now it is difficult for us to think deeply or focus on one task. I never criticize multi-tasking. Connecting one with another will be source of innovation. But when you want to think deeply, your concentration will be distracted very easily. I called it ‘Thinking Surfing’. Our thoughts are very superficially. We are looking into surface, never having deep insights.

My name is Yoshua, I have ADHD. There is interesting research represented by University of Southern California: Association of Digital Media Use With Subsequent Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Among Adolescents.

Among the 2587 adolescents (63% eligible students; 54.4% girls; mean [SD] age 15.5 years [0.5 years]) who did not have significant symptoms of ADHD at baseline, the median follow-up was 22.6 months (interquartile range [IQR], 21.8–23.0, months). The mean (SD) number of baseline digital media activities used at a high-frequency rate was 3.62 (3.30); 1398 students (54.1%) indicated high frequency of checking social media (95% CI, 52.1%-56.0%), which was the most common media activity. High-frequency engagement in each additional digital media activity at baseline was associated with a significantly higher odds of having symptoms of ADHD across follow-ups (OR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.06–1.16). This association persisted after covariate adjustment (OR, 1.10; 95% CI, 1.05–1.15). The 495 students who reported no high-frequency media use at baseline had a 4.6% mean rate of having ADHD symptoms across follow-ups vs 9.5% among the 114 who reported 7 high-frequency activities (difference; 4.9%; 95% CI, 2.5%-7.3%) and vs 10.5% among the 51 students who reported 14 high-frequency activities (difference, 5.9%; 95% CI, 2.6%-9.2%).

Reference: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2687861

People have difficulty in completing tasks and it is very similar to ADHD. I wrote about how plastic is your brain. Because of smartphone, your brain have possibility to be overwritten not to focus but to surfing.

My blog: Our Brain is massively Plastic. (https://becominghuman.ai/the-possibility-of-auis-our-brain-is-massively-plastic-3670df7f1938)

The Myth: Technology Always Helps You

You might think technology always helps you. I’m python engineer, and I love technology. But Technology DOES’T Always Help You. Important thing is to think about cognitive science deeply, and thinking from human. Lack of humanity, many products have side effects.

Using Facebook will make you “Facebook Depression”. Michigan, Yale, and UC San Diego reported about Facebook Depression. People have negative perception toward others content. I think it is maybe amplification of angry or envy and desire for recognition. If you don’t want to be Facebook Depression, you have to tune the network and eliminate people who have destructive thoughts, or you have to decide not to use Facebook.

Facebook just admitted that social media is bad for you
Facebook has admitted that social media can be bad for you, in a move described as a "pretty big deal" by one tech…www.independent.co.uk

People don’t notice how you are addicted to SNS and how serious does it damage to you. Truly, it is like ADHD. ADHD people sometimes have deep depression problem. The digital world makes people ADHD.

Open-End Question makes your brain strong

Instead of thinking surfing, thinking or talking about open-end questions on the abstract things are good for your brain. For example, “What is your favorite memory in your life?” “How will you help people when you see people have trouble at work?” , “What do you think about Nicotine?”.

New synapses will be created when you think “different”, and connected others and your brain will be strong.

I think we have to take 1 hour to focus on one thing; meditation, reading a book, talking with others without any digital device, and exercise to strengthen of neuron connections. To do these things, there are some positive side effects. For example, meditation and excise is said that its act produce serotonin.

The world become very distracted, so we need to create social system in which people can focus on what they really want to do.

We are seeking NLP engineer to create a tool for getting organized for people have distraction or depression problem!