Honestly—us — the human race — need to have a serious talk about what we want, and how we want the future to shape us.

AI & Technology is changing us, and the serious ethics discussion is left behind — all while we might be fueling an epidemic in anxiety disorders and loosing ourselves slowly.

Algorithms, AI & Technology is Hurting Human Memory

in a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology researchers show that the people that actively shared and documented their life on Facebook and other social media, had a more incorrect memory of the actual events.

A 2011 study “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips,” showed that when people have access to search engines, they remember fewer facts and less information because they know they can rely on “search” as a readily available shortcut.

Another study appearing in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that cognitive capacity was significantly reduced whenever a smartphone was within reach, even when the phone was off.

The most interesting study however is showing that younger brains can process information faster than previous generations, and so they can transition from task to task more easily. And people who grew up in this modern tech era may be even better conditioned for the constant switching.

But this research also is revealing a key counter-theme: Older adults may be mentally superior in their ability to focus and learn due to a more resilient and long-lasting attention span.

Facebook is like living in a small town where all agree with you

Although we all like to loose ourselves in our Facebook feed — few are aware of the huge effect Facebook’s algorithms have on their cognition, memory and world views.

To get a better view of what is going on, is that looking at it like Facebook is placing you in a small town, based on the likes and updates you do. They make sure to place people around you that have similar views, because it makes you feel like you are valued (we generally like people that agree with us more than people that don’t)

What is exponentially worse is that the feeling of appreciation and self worth is a virtual one — and adding salt to the wound — Facebook enables business to come and advertise knowing that you and your town has a very specific sets of values, world views and common opinions. This is like walking in a world of confirmation.

This is FINE, however the problem is that whenever you leave this town — as it is nothing more than a virtual place — to engage in the real world — there is a great chance that you will eventually feel like the world that agrees with you, is better than the world where you encounter much more emotionally challenging hurdles.

Elevating this whole problem on a national level, study’s have shown that social media is an increasingly important factor in elections — both local and national.

The American Anxiety Disorder Epidemic

A recent survey from American Psychiatric Association finds that there has been a major shift in anxiety among Americans over just the past year.

40% more Americans say that they are more anxious than the year before, and that is a huge rise.

Even though scientific genetic studies suggests the dominant reason for anxiety is in the genetic formula, and that studies have shown that when anxiety develops before age 20, close relatives are more likely to have anxiety as well — there are still a lot of questions still being discussed.

When the science suggest that the genetic markup can fuel the anxiety response and that its more likely that you pass on this markup if you have been young when you started having an unhealthy relationship with anxiety — it is worth discussing just how much genetic control and how much we as a society and individuals control.

FOMO — Fear of Missing Out, is like adding gasoline on the fire

In a recent study published in Motivation and Emotion, scientists at Carleton and McGill University examined the social psychological basis of FOMO.

They wanted to see how it affected first-year university students, predicting it would be associated with a host of negative outcomes related to stress and negative emotionality.

Further, the scientists predicted that students who experienced FOMO would be more likely to miss out on sleepand experience more fatigue.

The Important Ethical Discussion

Even when there are surprisingly interesting projects that work directly using AI & Technology to strengthen the human emotional immune system to eventually help turn the tide on the development — the vast majority of algorithms, AI & Technology pitch towards increasing this imbalance.

We need to have a serious discussion on ethics, and control of companies & data that have an increasingly larger effect — not only on our lives — but on our health. Do we want to hand our full trust to companies like Facebook, Google and Apple — and believe that they are doing everything in our best interest.

I look at it like the requirements to label ingredients in our food when we shop — so that we can — if we want to — look through it to see if it contains any elements that we do not want to put in our body. The same way we can require big companies to label the types of changes and limitations they are adding to their systems in order to provide us with what we would like to see.

We have a tendency to believe that what we see is all there is — and up until now Facebook, Google and Apple have been able to prosper greatly on just reducing friction — but we are at a point where we really need to open the discussion about what we want — because for better or for worse — this has a significant effect on our society, our lives and our health.