Today’s Daily Read is relevant to my latest post in the Technology and Its Discontents series in that it discusses the harm we are doing to ourselves through our addictions to our phones and screens. Daniel J. Levitin writes in The Guardian about the detrimental effects of information overload on our brains. In this new era of instant electronic gratification, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we are getting more done, when in reality, the research shows that we are simply feeding our addiction to dopamine. I already know about the effects of dopamine and wrote about it here; but it’s funny how having knowledge of the harm and seeing how it affects me has still not been enough for me to stop spending so much time with screens. Levitin’s article is a bit lengthy but please don’t let that deter you; five to ten minutes of reading will reward you with some insights that may help you – or at least, inform you. Here’s a tidbit from the article that was new – and also surprising and worrying – to me: “Just having the opportunity to multitask is detrimental to cognitive performance. Glenn Wilson, former visiting professor of psychology at Gresham College, London, calls it info-mania. His research found that being in a situation where you are trying to concentrate on a task, and an email is sitting unread in your inbox, can reduce your effective IQ by 10 points. And although people ascribe many benefits to marijuana, including enhanced creativity and reduced pain and stress, it is well documented that its chief ingredient, cannabinol, activates dedicated cannabinol receptors in the brain and interferes profoundly with memory and with our ability to concentrate on several things at once. Wilson showed that the cognitive losses from multitasking are even greater than the cognitive losses from pot‑smoking.”