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YOUR BRAIN ON COMPUTERS

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Rhiana Maidenberg listened to an audio book on her mobile phone while watching television during a workout in San
Francisco.
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: August 24, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, FACEBOOK

juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps TWITTER
out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the RECOMMEND
high-definition television.
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Your Brain on Computers
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Break Time vs. Screen Time As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also
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churning her legs in fast loops on an
a deluge of data can affect the way
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In gyms and elsewhere, people use

Multimedia phones and other electronic devices to
get work done — and as a reliable
antidote to boredom.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become

full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet
connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the
The Unplugged Challenge grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner
conversation.
Enlarge This Image

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Loren Frank, a professor of physiology,
said downtime lets the brain go over
experiences, “solidify them and turn
them into permanent long-term
memories.”
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entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists
point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep
their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting
downtime that could allow them to better learn and
remember information, or come up with new ideas.
Ms. Bates, for example, might be clearer-headed if she went
for a run outside, away from her devices, research suggests.
At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists
have found that when rats have a new experience, like
exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new
patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break
from their exploration do they process those patterns in a
way that seems to create a persistent memory of the
experience.

The researchers suspect that the findings also apply to how humans learn.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and
turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in
the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and
memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent
this learning process.”

At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a
walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing
a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.

Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising,
or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their
brains, scientists say.

“People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said Marc
Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.

Regardless, there is now a whole industry of mobile software developers competing to help
people scratch the entertainment itch. Flurry, a company that tracks the use of apps, has
found that mobile games are typically played for 6.3 minutes, but that many are played for
much shorter intervals. One popular game that involves stacking blocks gets played for 2.2
minutes on average.

Today’s game makers are trying to fill small bits of free time, said Sebastien de Halleux, a
co-founder of PlayFish, a game company owned by the industry giant Electronic Arts.

“Instead of having long relaxing breaks, like taking two hours for lunch, we have a lot of
these micro-moments,” he said. Game makers like Electronic Arts, he added, “have
reinvented the game experience to fit into micro-moments.”

Many business people, of course, have good reason to be constantly checking their phones.
But this can take a mental toll. Henry Chen, 26, a self-employed auto mechanic in San
Francisco, has mixed feelings about his BlackBerry habits.

“I check it a lot, whenever there is downtime,” Mr. Chen said. Moments earlier, he was
texting with a friend while he stood in line at a bagel shop; he stopped only when the
woman behind the counter interrupted him to ask for his order.

Mr. Chen, who recently started his business, doesn’t want to miss a potential customer.
Yet he says that since he upgraded his phone a year ago to a feature-rich BlackBerry, he
can feel stressed out by what he described as internal pressure to constantly stay in
contact.

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A version of this article appeared in print on August 25, 2010, on page

B1 of the New York edition.

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