The unforeseen consequences of powerful technology have given humanity a pretty hard time. The massive troop charges into machine guns in World War I seem to be an appropriate poster child for our collective inability to comprehend the most obvious effects of technological advancement, symbolizing how much physical suffering and death it actually takes for a cautionary message to get across at all.

But today, with information technology exploding at a rate of change no area of human endeavor has seen, being vigilant about the effects of pervasive new digital technology is hardly paranoia. People simply do not understand the absurdity of the reality we’re in: At the turn of the millennium, the Internet still had all the innocent novelty of the dot-com boom and bust; it caused quite a stir. Some people were actually making some money off of their websites in the stock market — like a real business or something! Adorable. Now a search engine all but commands (at least) the commercial element of a near global infrastructure that we depend on as much or more than the highway system to live our lives.

While our interaction with this digital infrastructure is more complicated and includes many more players than a car-on-the-highway analogy, our adaptation to it and reliance on it is no less evident. Whereas the consequences of the car include CO2 pollution and injury or death, caused by travel at speeds we didn’t evolve to collide at, the consequences of communication and information technology can be predicted by anticipating brain stimulation we didn’t evolve with.

It’s been modestly publicized that using smartphones has odd effects on the brain. The brain has evolved to unconsciously anticipate activity that originates from places it has learned are relevant to survival; it’s as simple as early humans having to anticipate movement or sound in the distance, which could belong to prey or preditors. In today’s social jungle, the smartphone takes every one of the many vital forms of modern contact, arguably quite critical to our survival, and puts them in a buzzing and ringing device in our pockets.

Studies on the affects of texting in teenagers, arguably the first demographic to fully embrace the new method of communication, concluded that the concrete social anticipation combined with the chemical reward that came with receiving, opening and replying to the message was what made it so addicting. Smartphones, with their unprecedented amount of offerings, take that subconscious formula and multiply it many, many times; a crippled ability to be in the moment and retain learned ideas are just a few documented consequences of long-term use.

But perhaps the most ambiguous area of concern for this technology is its effect on the developing brains of children. It’s been known for years that television is bad for young children, because it simply does not stimulate brain growth, and it has every reason to do with our evolution. Even with educational programming, the idleness of television does not compliment how very young children are wired to develop.

As smartphones have, with unsettling speed, gone from a useful novelty to a pratical requirement, their availability has also broadened — and they’ve found themselves in the hands of young children, for placation and entertainment. And with great effectiveness: designed to be incredibly intuitive devices for even the most clueless of adults, children have been widely observed to take to smartphones like nothing before. There are now even several apps designed for preschool age children. Many parents have claimed to have witnessed positive educational effects.

People are social creatures. While young children are probably free of the intoxicating social anticipation of the smartphone, and the smartphone has a superficial dimension of interactivity that TV lacks, the fact remains that it discourages social interaction, which needs to be squeezed in at every possible moment with children. Well-adjusted children need to be used to being in tune with their surroundings and free from unnatural digital distractions, because that’s how young children have developed through the millions of years of human evolution.

Touching, talking and physical playing and movement remain the only way to make sure a child will reach his or her full developmental potential. You’d be surprised how quickly a 4- or 5-year-old can learn to go to YouTube on a smartphone and zone the hell out like the rest of us; it really is only a matter of touching a shape.

—Wiley Robinson is an undecided sophomore. He can be reached rrobin23@utk.edu.