Questão 17 - Barão de Mauá Junho 2019

The Digital Revolution and Adolescent Brain Evolution

 

    The Digital Revolution and Adolescent Brain Evolution The human brain is a social brain. Our ability to gauge the moods and intentions of others, to detect the truth or falsehood of their communications, to discern friend from foe, and to form alliances are amongst its most complex and important tasks. These skills are of premier importance to fulfill our biological imperatives of staying alive (through the protection of the group) and reproducing. From this perspective, it is no wonder that so much of our brains is dedicated to social cognition. In fact, across primate species, the single best predictor of the size of the neocortex is the size of that species’ social group. Combining data from 38 primate species, Dunbar estimated that based on neocortex size the number of meaningful social relationships (i.e., where everyone knows everyone) for humans should be between 100 and 230. The value of 150 has been popularized as “Dunbar’s number” as converging evidence from diverse fields seem to coincide with the prediction. For instance, 150 is the approximate size of military units from Roman antiquity to the present, religious communities (e.g., Amish, Hutterite), Aboriginal groups, villages in England before the Industrial Revolution, and the number of people on holiday card lists. 

    The central hub of circuitry related to social skills is the late maturing highly plastic prefrontal cortex. Like any complex skills, mastery requires lots of practice. Much of the discernment relies on exquisitely subtle detection of non verbal cues such as slight changes in eye gaze, millisecond differences in speech timing, synchrony of response to shared environmental stimuli, breathing patterns, body posture, touch, odors, etc. Might the increasing reliance on digital social interactions hinder exposure to the “real-world” experiences necessary to master these most important skills?

    The average number of “friends” per adolescent Facebook user is 834 - far outpacing Dunbar’s number. The discrepancy may arise from different definitions of “friendship” or “relationship” – perhaps adolescents are not maintaining meaningful interactions with all 800+ of their contacts. This appears to be the case, as graph theory analysis of social network interactions indicates that the number of relationships maintained by regular exchange of information falls back to the 100–200 range. Although digital interactions are not the same as face to face relationships, they are social, they are meaningful to the adolescents, and they are associated with other measures of well-being.

    The playing out of social life in a transparent global digital domain has raised the specter of cyberbullying. The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) defines cyber bullying as “when the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post texts or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person”. Statistics regarding its prevalence vary enormously depending on what threshold is used for abuse. One aspect that is different from traditional bullying is that the acts are distributed to a much wider audience and once on the Internet they are potentially permanent. This has implications both for the bullied and the bullies.

    A positive social aspect is that the technologies enable adolescents to connect with a much wider portion of the world and broaden their exposure to ideas, customs, and ways of life. Appreciating the commonalities among other young people throughout the world may help (i) __________________.

Disponível em: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3432415/. Acesso em: 9 fev. 2019.

    Which phrase best completes the last sentence, “Appreciating the commonalities among other young people throughout the world may help (i) __________________”?