A prophet with a disturbing message – or just a Luddite?

Millennials could face huge problems adjusting to the culture of traditional business organisations over the coming years. In many cases, over-exposure to digital devices has compromised social skills and the ability to interact with others successfully in the real world.

That's the view of Dr Susan Greenfield, the controversial British neuroscientist, who believes that digital technologies are reshaping our brains, and not for the better.

Greenfield says that as the “born digital” generation enters the workplace in the years ahead, there will be “a real and significant challenge to the HR departments of organisations, depending on the nature of the work involved”. She says the ability to think creatively or laterally, and to understand the nuances of communication with others, is an issue that could pose problems for those bred on a diet of digital technology.

Greenfield’s views are controversial and she has been called a “Luddite” and accused of being out of touch with modern norms. “I’ve been described as Amish, hankering for a time that has long passed,” she says.

Failure to publish

A more serious charge from the science community is that, as a scientist, she has failed to publish academic research to back up her assertions, presenting her arguments in more popular forums, such as newspapers, and in Britain’s House of Lords, where she sits as a peer.

Greenfield has also used the term “autistic-like” to describe the more extreme effects on some of those who have been overexposed to the digital world at the expense of other forms of interaction. Not surprisingly, this has enraged many, given the sensitivities around the subject of autistic-spectrum disorders.

Greenfield is unrepentant. Her thesis, set out in her book Mind Change, is that digital technologies are making younger people passive and immature, destroying the ability to create their own narratives. "Traditionally in younger generations, children used their imagination in play. You found your own props. A stick was used as a sword, and original storylines were generated as you played outside with others, and, above all, scenarios were internally driven. You would be in control of your inner private world," she says.

Contrast that with today’s screen-based activity, she adds. While accepting that some interaction takes place in navigating options, for the most part, Greenfield believes, users of technology are passive recipients of material someone else has created. “The content of a screen-based lifestyle is unprecedented both in how it shapes thoughts and feelings and because of the corollary effects of not exercising and not playing and not learning outside. Although an increasing amount of digital aficionados may eventually opt exclusively for mobile technologies, for the time being an appreciable amount of time is spent sitting down in front of a computer screen.

“In any case, if you are busy texting on your cellphone or tweeting, even if you are out walking, you’ll still be less likely to be taking more strenuous physical exercise than you may have otherwise.”

Since 1970, the radius of activity for children – in other words, the amount of space they freely wander around in near the home – has shrunk by an astonishing 90 per cent, Greenfield says.

Gloomy scenario

Passivity may be the least of the problems in the gloomy scenario Greenfield envisages. She likens the scale of the problem to climate change, as a threat to future civilisation. Rather than dehumanising us and turning us into zombies, she suggests that the opposite might be the case. “Some of the very worst aspects of being too human – desire for status irrespective of talent, mob mentality, and uncaring recklessness are now being given free rein, through the unchartered territory of cyberspace,” she writes.

While there is no original Greenfield research in the book, she has managed to collate a wide range of references to studies backing up her arguments about the dangers of unfettered digital experience.

The revelation that Steve Jobs limited his children's access to technology at home gave her encouragement, as, one imagines, did the following quote from Google chairman Eric Schmidt: "I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information . . . is in fact affecting cognition. It is affecting deeper thinking. I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something."

Greenfield has a point, however unfashionable it may be. While it is easy to poke holes in the science in the book, it still serves as an interesting polemic and a starting point for further debate.

What Greenfield doesn’t provide, however, is clear answers as to what to do next.