Dumber Days: Wrestling With the Modern Drag of Mental Oblivion
Things are getting real stupid, and so are we, statistically!
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Dumber Days: Wrestling With the Modern Drag of Mental Oblivion
My natural drift has always been toward stupidity. One of the reasons I write, in fact, is to flog myself toward a sharper appreciation of the world. A few weeks ago, I was at Cherry Creek Mall, imagining that I could stop myself from becoming a complete idiot by buying a flip phone. I’d just spritzed my neck with some free samples of $200 cologne, the contents of which an elderly clerk had taken great pains to detail, limning hints of this and that, really putting effort into the sale–old school human customer service, certainly not circa 2026. So I did my best to deceive her. Yes, I’d be back around in no time. I just wanted to shop around a bit. It’s a wonderful cologne. As they say in the sales world, Buyers are liars.
Really, I was in a rush after a full day of magazine work, and my feigned interest in the cologne was a ruse to mask my BO before a social engagement. I could have gone home, but I’d convinced myself that buying a flip phone was an essential errand. You see, lately, I’d been experiencing some problems with my brain.
On occasion when it’s not horrifying, recognizing you’re just a teaspoon of data in an ocean of human experience can be comforting. In this case, a lot of other people had been arriving at the same realization I had: namely, “I’m getting dumber.” I don’t know if that’s comforting or not. I’ll have to think about it.
I’d seen the headlines about falling IQs for years, but the conversation had been going mainstream. Maybe it had gone beyond the scores, and people were noticing real changes in how their mind was functioning, like I had.
I’d spoken with a local neurologist about this recently. Not by appointment. I was working on an article about so-called “digital dementia,” the pop-sci label being used to both explain our shared cognitive decline and assign the blame for it. I can’t quote the doctor here, as she wasn’t going on record for the Denverse newsletter, but apparently there’s quite a bit of alarm in her field about the long-term effects of social media, AI, and screen time on the brain. To summarize, many neurologists are worried that we’re going to see a massive spike in dementia rates in the next 20-30 years.
I don’t want to get in the weeds here, but one of the simple dynamics behind our tech’s effects on the brain has been called “cognitive offloading,” where the work you traditionally do with your brain is sloughed off to an outside tool, causing the neurons associated with that task to die off. Use it or lose it, essentially. Can’t remember the name of the poet who wrote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty? Maybe in the past you would’ve strained to remember long enough that your brain would’ve revived and strengthened those connections (if you’ve ever had an actor’s name spring back into your head hours after you strained to remember it, you know how this goes). But now we reach for our phones before the strain begins, and, in so doing, little by little, we kill off a bit of the brain.
There are other factors at play too, of course. Sustained concentration on a single task rewards the brain, whereas getting pinged constantly from various diversions doesn’t. As I’m writing this, for instance, it’s very easy for me to distract myself with my phone or a tab on my computer, especially if I suddenly find myself at a loss for words.
And, of course, upon encountering writer’s block, plenty of people now resort to getting “help.” I’m writing this on Google Docs right now, and they’ve put a little AI magic star icon on the page itself (not at the corner, not in the toolbar at the top, but at the bottom of the very page you’re writing on). I can’t imagine the willpower kids have to exert to avoid these temptations, now that they’ve turned essential brainwork into an extracurricular. But I digress.
It was after my conversation with the doctor that I suddenly became even more neurotic about my own mental health and problems with tech. As I’ve said, intelligence has always been something I’ve had to work at. I don’t think I’m a good writer so much as I’m a good revisionist of my stupidity. Maybe all roads lead to Rome, but whatever. I can say that I’ve noticed some negative changes in the way my mind works over the years. Some of this is due to starting the business. When you change your directives and habits, you change your brain. The brain I’m working with now is the Denverse Magazine model brain, which has its advantages. One of the main tradeoffs though is an addiction to my phone–ironic for a print magazine publisher, I know. But I can’t go ten minutes without checking my email to see if some new subscribers have rolled in, or if we have a great new lead on a story, or if we have an interested advertiser, or, naturally, if there’s some crisis that needs to be addressed. Then, once my email has me, I’m interfacing with the genius machine and its cocktail of stressors and sedatives designed to hold my attention captive, all while doping my brain chemistry and snoozing precious gray matter.
Awareness helps… I guess. The data is coming in, and, even though the use of these devices is practically mandated by employers, our social lives, etc., at least we know they’re destroying our brains?
Yes, I’ve been scrambling to find a way out of the trap.
Desperate but fragrant, I went to the Verizon store in the mall next to the Macy’s and got the attention of one of the sales associates. I think I was a bit manic. I can get that way when I’m starting out on some grand resolution that inevitably crashes on the rocks. I was wall-eyed, excited to finally commit to a flip phone again, the way I had been the last time I failed at this quest. I rabidly explained my mission, limning the ins and outs of my plans for change, my mental revolution! The sales associate looked at me like I was stupid.
Yours,
Paul M. French, editor
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