A Deadly Wandering Quotes

“researchers worry that heavy use of interactive media can, over time, reduce attention spans. The fear is that we grow so accustomed to frequent bursts of stimulation, we have trouble feeling satisfied in their absence.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“He repeated that the texting driver faces a sixfold crash risk, whereas a driver talking on the phone faced a four-times increase in likelihood of a crash, which he said was roughly equivalent to someone who is legally drunk. A drunk driver and a person on a phone were equally likely to crash, whereas “we’re seeing the risk factor for accidents when someone is texting exceeds the level when people are legally drunk.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“Dr. Greenfield, predictably, goes further. He deems young people who are raised on digital devices “Generation D.” “They’re so amped up on dopamine that when it’s not firing, they feel dull, dead,” he says. And that means they need to move on to the next thing, quickly, rather than staying with something. “They have no threshold for attentional capacity.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“the brain is limited, lacks bottomless capacity, and isn’t particularly fast relative to computer technology. The technological advances defined by laws of Moore and Metcalfe got married and long since overtook what our brains can handle. And we know now that their union also presents the challenge of addiction, or, at least, serious compulsion. Even allowing for the fact that we can know these devices challenge our limitations, sometimes they are so compelling we can’t stop using them.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“You hear the ping of an incoming text or call, you respond; the ping happens, you respond. And each time you respond, you get a hit of dopamine. It’s a pleasurable feeling, a release from the reward center. Then it’s gone. There is no incoming text, no stimulation. You start to feel bored. You crave another hit.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“What happens when we disclose information? What they found was that the reward areas of the brain light up when people share. “Here, we suggest that humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary awards such as food and sex.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“At the same time, such technology—from the television to the computer and phone—can put pressure on the brain by presenting it with more information, and of a type of information, that makes it hard for us to keep up. That is particularly true of interactive electronics, delivering highly relevant, stimulating social content, and with increasing speed. The onslaught taxes our ability to attend, to pay attention, arguably among the most important, powerful, and uniquely human of our gifts.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“Here, we suggest that humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary awards such as food and sex.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“The study, by a research firm called Localytics, looked at the use of five hundred news apps between July of 2012 and July of 2013. It found that people were spending 26 percent less time in each session. At the same time, it found that people were launching their news apps 39 percent more each month. It’s important not to read too much into one study. But the research points to a very interesting dynamic: The reason people are spending less time in each app session isn’t because their interest in news is declining. After all, people are launching news apps more and more often. They like and want news. They just don’t have the patience to spend much time with it.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“Take, for instance, several classic studies with animal models. A baboon, say, is shown that if it pushes a lever then some food will drop through a dispenser. But the animal doesn’t know which push of the lever will be the one that will deliver the food. “The baboon will press the lever at a very steady rate. ‘Is the food there yet, is the food there yet?’ Each press is like a question,” explains Dan Bernstein, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, where he has an office down the hall from Dr. Atchley. It may not be a comfortable comparison for some. But the image of a baboon pulling a lever for food is not all that dissimilar from a person obsessively pecking at their phone waiting for the next email to appear.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“A typical office worker was getting interrupted by various media stimulation every three minutes in 2004, according to research by Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California at Irvine. That was before the spread of instant messaging and Facebook. By 2013, the interruptions were every two minutes; such intrusions came either from a person responding to a new stimulus—like an incoming email—or from an internal urge to change tasks, say, to write a new email.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“He repeated that the texting driver faces a sixfold crash risk, whereas a driver talking on the phone faced a four-times increase in likelihood of a crash, which he said was roughly equivalent to someone who is legally drunk.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age

“For all the gifts of computer technology, if its power goes underappreciated, it can hijack the brain.”
― Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age