Yuval Noah Harari is professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of the award-winning volume Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In his sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, he declares:

In the early 21st century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station—and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo sapiens. Those who miss this train will never get a second chance. In order to get a seat on it, you need to understand 21st century technology, and in particular the powers of biotechnology and computer algorithms.

. . . These powers are far more potent than steam and the telegraph, and they will not be used mainly for the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons. The main products of the 21st century will be bodies, brains and minds, and the gap between those who know how to engineer bodies and brains and those who do not will be wider than the gap between Dickens’s Britain and the Madhi’s Sudan. Indeed, it will be bigger than the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals. In the 21st century, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction.³⁰

Harari maintains that humanity’s new religion is what he calls “dataism,” the worldview that all of reality can be reduced to numbers. Those data are immense and are growing at a rate humans simply cannot keep up with. “Dataists are skeptical about human knowledge and wisdom,” he suggests, “and prefer to put their trust in Big Data and computer algorithms.”³¹ He ends up predicting a dystopian future, in part because resistance is futile. “You may not agree with the idea that organisms are algorithms, and that giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods of processing data. But you should know that this is the current scientific dogma, and that it is changing our world beyond recognition.”³²

Changes in our humanity will not happen overnight:

Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants look back and realise that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the bible, built the Great Wall of China and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s antics. This will not happen in a day, or a year. Indeed, it is already happening right now, through innumerable mundane actions. Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness, and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.³³

What is happening to our humanity? Among other technologies, how are digital media impacting us?

Shaping Future Generations and Ourselves

The Fisher-Price iPad Apptivity Seat may be one of the most eloquent, if grotesque, icons of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. “The seat is the ultimate babysitter,”³⁴ says Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood director Susan Linn. The device is a child’s car seat with a holder attached for an iPad or other digital device that hovers over the child’s face. Advertised for newborns-to-toddlers, some experts argue that the seat is tantamount to giving babies their first hit of digital crack cocaine.

Frighteningly, the past two decades of research on emerging digital media have shown less than positive effects on both adults and children. According to Mari Swingle, instead of perfecting ourselves, “For children, adolescents, and youth, excessive usage of digital media is now highly associated with learning disabilities, emotional dysregulation, as well as conduct and behavior disorders. For adults, it is highly correlated with anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction and sexual deviation, insomnia, social isolation, disaffected pair bonding, marital conflict, and compromised work performance.”³⁵ Swingle continues:

The universal place-time accessibility we initially embraced thereafter systematically invaded all aspects of our lives. We are now always “on call”: workers, parents, spouses, children, lovers, all of us in (all) our multiple roles. Many of us now do not, or cannot, liberate ourselves from “accessibility” and the buzz of the world. But what is this doing to our brains? The short answer is that our brains are speeding up, but not in a good way. Our neurophysiological reaction, or functional adaptation, to the age of digital media is a higher state of arousal and the nemesis that comes with [sic]. What nemesis? Quite simply, higher states of arousal come with decreased abilities to self-quiet. Elevated states of arousal are further coupled with a reduced ability to self-stimulate and self-entertain. This includes reduced abilities to observe, integrate information, and to be creative. In essence, we have less ability to sustain focus on the normal, the baseline, including states of observation, contemplation, and transitions from which ideas spark—what many under the age of twenty now consider a void, proclaiming boredom.

We now feel agitated when not externally stimulated; we need to be occupied, entertained. We also have greater troubles quieting, including reaching states of repose, satisfaction, and restorative sleep.³⁶

One expert who has warned about the deleterious effects of digital media on infants and children is Mary Aiken, a cyberpsychologist in Ireland. She and her colleagues at the CyberPsychology Research Network have conducted research and training with INTERPOL, the FBI, and the White House. In a 2015 article in the journal Psychology Research, Aiken et al. called for an urgent investigation of the effects of interactive screentime on infants and very young children.³⁷ In her most recent volume, The Cyber Effect, Aiken chronicles ways cyberspace is changing the way we think, feel, and behave.³⁸ The findings are not comforting.

During the first three months of a baby’s postpartum life, her brain will grow a remarkable 20 percent. According to the best brain science, when a baby is born, each cell of the brain has about 2,500 synapses (junctions between two brain cells). In the next three years that number grows to about 15,000 per brain cell. At this stage the brain is creating 700-1,000 new neural connections every second. In other words, the foundation for higher-level brain function is developing robustly during this phase of a baby’s life.

We also know that the best way to help a baby develop speech and other cognitive skills is through human interaction. “Time and again videos and television shows have been shown to be ineffective in learning prior to the age of two.”³⁹ Nevertheless, because they tap into our technological optimism, devices like the Apptivity Seat tempt parents to think digital media may be a helpful tool in teaching babies to learn. Just the opposite, they may cause harm. One study of a thousand infants who viewed more than two hours of DVDs per day actually performed worse on language assessments than babies who did not view DVDs.⁴⁰

It is no wonder, then, that in October 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics offered the following recommendations:

• For children younger than 18 months, avoid use of screen media other than video-chatting. Parents of children 18 to 24 months of age who want to introduce digital media should choose high-quality programming, and watch it with their children to help them understand what they’re seeing.
• For children ages 2 to 5 years, limit screen use to 1 hour per day of high-quality programs. Parents should co-view media with children to help them understand what they are seeing and apply it to the world around them.
• For children ages 6 and older, place consistent limits on the time spent using media, and the types of media, and make sure media does not take the place of adequate sleep, physical activity and other behaviors essential to health.
• Designate media-free times together, such as dinner or driving, as well as media-free locations at home, such as bedrooms.
• Have ongoing communication about online citizenship and safety, including treating others with respect online and offline.⁴¹