Is Your Use Of Tech Good Or Bad For Brain Health In Later Life?

The word “screentime” isn’t usually associated with anything positive. We all use apps to try to limit it, we all read articles telling us about how it hurts teenagers’ sleep and damages toddlers’ development.

Now, it could be that the tech isn’t really to blame. This writer certainly remembers staying up late as a child without modern tech to blame!

Perhaps you (dear reader) did the same.

The case against tech

There are several main potential problems:

• Passive screentime is not the same as active engagement. Watching TV shows or scrolling social media in search of dopamine that one won’t find there, is not the same as, say, reading a health science article from your favorite health science newsletter 😉
  • See also: Short- and Long-Term Effects of Passive and Active Screen Time on Young Children’s Phonological Memory ← yes, it’s about children, but honestly, scouring PubMed for studies into screentime and older adults mostly just brings up studies about kids
• Increased use of omnipresent technology (especially apps with notifications or that one can constantly refresh to get more content) means increased distractibility
  • See also: The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance
• Decreased use of one’s own brain (as we can automate many things with technology) means losing those cognitive abilities to a greater or lesser degree.
  • See also: Consequences of cognitive offloading: Boosting performance but diminishing memory

However! We can mitigate each of those:

• Engage with our technology actively, and thus make it a cognitively stimulating activity; this means doing things that challenge us cognitively. It doesn’t have to mean hard stuff, but it does have to be the kind of thing we couldn’t do while half-asleep.
• Consciously decide our technology’s access to us. For example, this writer has her phone silenced 100% of the time, and only allows a very few apps to give even silent notifications, and there are set hours when her phone goes completely untouched.
• Decide what cognitive abilities we don’t care to maintain. You may be thinking “but surely, all our cognitive abilities are important!”, but… Are they? Is it truly critical for you to be able to do mental arithmetic rather than use a calculator? Do you really need to know how to spell “necessary eligibility embarrassment privilege”? Do you really need to know (by heart) your friend’s phone number? And, maybe you do! We all lead different lives, after all. But it may well be that there’s some merit to be found in picking your battles. This writer with dyscalculia (numerical equivalent of dyslexia) will use a calculator to do very simple calculations sometimes, for me it’s better to not waste my time expending a lot of mental energy on simple sums that I might still get wrong, and use that time and energy on more productive things. Perhaps you have a similar area of cognitive function that it makes sense for you to offload.

The case for tech

Much more research has been done into how technology use affects developing brains, than on how technology use affects aging brains.

But “less” is not “none”, so…

Our technology enables our connection to other people. It’s often viewed as the opposite, “people don’t know how to have a conversation these days; they’re all on their phones”, but before that it was radios, before that, newspapers/magazines; there’s always been something.

But, phones were originally designed to connect humans to other humans, and that remains their principal function, in various ways.

See also: Effectiveness of Technology Interventions in Addressing Social Isolation, Connectedness, and Loneliness in Older Adults: Systematic Umbrella Review

And this is critical, because a lack of social connection is one of the highest predictors of cognitive decline:

See for example: Late-life social activity and subsequent risk of dementia and mild cognitive impairment

Plus, even on the less social side of things, technology can also help us to stay independent for longer:

How can technology support ageing in place in healthy older adults? A systematic review

…which again, beyond the obvious immediate health-related quality of life differences, has an impact on maintenance of cognitive functions.

See further: A meta-analysis of technology use and cognitive aging

Want to learn more?

Check out:

How To Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

Take care!