We Get Younger And Fatter Because Of Computers

According to Professor Susan Greenfield, the leading researcher of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, who has studied the dependence between work in front of the computer and autism, computer games and Internet communication make human brain degrade. Excessive communication with virtual reality rebuilds our conscience, by inhibiting social and cognitive customs and reflexes. As a result, one practically falls into childhood – he learns and memorizes slowly, loses the ability of analyzing his own experience, repeats the same mistakes again and again, and cannot react quickly when the situation changes.

Greenfield also describes the following situation with an example: if a child falls down from the tree and gets hurt badly, the next time he'll be afraid of climbing the tree again. When an adult plays a computer game and loses the game, he simply continues playing. In the end, getting used to virtual life leads to permanent changes in the brain – one cannot react appropriately to stress or critical situations, he thinks slowly and practically doesn't do anything.

This can also explain the fact that general computerization had worsened the epidemic of obesity all over the world. Spoiled by Internet and computer games, people eat a lot of food and do it incorrectly, without even thinking about the consequences.

"All normal people understand the consequences of overeating, but some are stopped by it, others are not", Greenfield says. She say this thing happens because of a wrong activity of the brain.

The cause is that a frequent usage of the computer lowers the level of attentiveness, suppresses the imagination and the feeling of compassion. In consequence, prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for these functions, begins working improperly, this being the cause of the described difficulties.

"The specific property of this area is that, if it isn't used, it simply stops working, and if it stops working, consider your brain has approached the state of childhood", declared Greenfield at a seminar.

More than that, the studies of other scientists showed that the lesions of the prefrontal cortex make people more intemperate and prepared to risk, it means that computers indeed make us appreciate reality in an inadequate way. Another scientific research says that in people suffering from obesity the activeness in the prefrontal cortex is in average lower than in others. The conclusion is that computers are related to obesity.

Nowadays, children aged 10 and 11 spend with their families approximately 1,300 hours per year, while in front of their computers they spend almost 2,000 hours yearly – these are scary, but real facts.

Posted by summer_rain