We are speechless. And it’s not a figure of speech, but the reality of our days spent with our heads bent over our screens smartphones. Because while we are busy communicating with the whole world via social channels, Whatsapp and Telegram groups and chat-bots, our brain loses the ability to speak: and with it the depth of dialogue and the thousand facets of a vocabulary and thought that was once rich and profound and now increasingly sparse. An international research published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that in 15 years we have lost on average 338 words spoken per dayapproximately 28% of the total. The decline is even more marked among young people who grew up within the digital revolution.
Just as the opportunities for face-to-face conversation decrease, even the banal ones with the neighbor, the bartender, fellow travelers on the subway, we also lose the ability to listen, process a response, interpret emotions and build a relationship.
The silence of relationships and brain synchronization
What happens in our brain when spoken words progressively give way to typed ones, or to nothing? What are we giving up when we put on our headphones and close ourselves in our digital world of chat and voice? «To many important aspects of our relationship life», he tells Panorama Giuseppe Rivaprofessor of general psychology and director ofHumane Technology Lab of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan. «Small talk, as the Americans call it, i.e. the classic chat, has an important role in social stimulation. Meeting other people, calling even just to talk about this and that makes us alive, because in interaction with others a series of neurobiological mechanisms come into play brain synchronization that create a connection and reward us. We don’t necessarily have to talk about major systems, what matters is to build discourses, capture the other’s attention, be recognized as an interlocutor.”
Every time we decide to isolate ourselves from those around us, and not open our mouths for hours, not even for the obvious conversation about the weather, we hurt ourselves. The cognitive dimension, brain capacity and the way of aging also come into play in the loss of words. «There are already several studies functional neuroimagingwhich show a relationship between the size of the lexicon and the amount of gray matter present in some areas of the brain, especially in the left inferior parietal lobe”, he says Jubin Abutalebiprofessor of neuropsychology atVita-Salute San Raffaele University. «In essence, those who have a richer vocabulary also have a greater density of gray matter in some specific regions of the brain. It is an interesting fact because it suggests how closely linguistic experience may be linked to brain structure and functioning.”
The breadth of the lexicon as a shield against decline
Speaking in a fluent and complete manner, not surprisingly, is in fact one of the activities that begins to deteriorate when cognitive decline appears. But the relationship could also work in the opposite direction. «If I have a greater amount of gray matter in the areas involved in language, I may be more resistant to decline, because I have what is called “neural reserve“”, continues Abutalebi. “And this is perhaps the most important consequence: if we speak less and less, the reserve may be reduced and we lose a possible instrument of protection. Furthermore, we face a less rich social life and this, in the long term, can have consequences on both basic and advanced cognitive functions.”
Not at allsocial isolation was inserted byWHO among the 14 modifiable risk factors that serve to preventAlzheimer’s. However, the effects of this generalized loss of words that is impacting our minds are not only affecting the elderly. The consequences could also be very serious for young people. First of all because of the risk of losing the ability to empathize, to find solutions to contingent problems and also to contain it control mania which is one of the great evils of our era. “Our children no longer call and talk less and less,” continues Riva, who wrote the book on the subject Me, us, them. Relationships in the era of social media and AI published by The Mill. «It may seem like something very banal, and we could even classify it as something of little importance because maybe they send the vocals.
The refuge of the asynchronous and the illusion of certainty
But it is not the same thing at all: when we speak we face areal-time interactionsynchronous. Voice messages and chats are instead asynchronous. Young people prefer the latter because the asynchronous person is more controlled. If I speak I have to be effective, I risk making mistakes, I have to modulate my tone and topics depending on who I have in front of me and the problems they present to me. If I write or send vowels I have the advantage that I can think about it, I reflect, I change. The new generations love control more, in all social interactions.”
They therefore prefer these methods to the spontaneity of the verbal, the synchronous, chasing security and guarantees, losing valuable training in dialectics and problem solving. Overlooking all the implications that the dangerous control freak has in everyday life. Not only that: neuroscientific research shows that the sense of connection develops above all in face-to-face interaction, through brain mechanisms that allow us to orient ourselves in shared space, to recognize others and to synchronize with them. «In this continuous relationship between human beings, the so-called come into play GPS neuronslinked to the sense of place, i mirror neuronsinvolved in the processes of empathy, and the synchronization of neural oscillations”, says the psychologist. «It is through these mechanisms that we do not simply limit ourselves to communicating with someone, but we build a common dimension, an “us”. When more and more of our discussions move from real meetings to screens we risk losing all of this.”
Semantic impoverishment in the professional future
One might say that it’s all wrong, the way in which we human beings equipped with increasingly advanced smartphones are facing the future of our (and other people’s) words. Also because, still referring to young people, we think about the consequences in the world of work that they will face in 10 or 15 years, perhaps in professions where speaking and knowing how to speak with empathy is fundamental: doctors, for example. «The problem does not only concern the so-called communication skills, but also the words with emotional connotations: we use them less and less”, concludes Riva. «We perhaps use the most frequent ones in our lexicon, such as “beautiful” or “ugly”, but there are many much more complex synonyms, with more implications and nuances, which are no longer used by young people».
But there is still a little hope. «The real topic that we still have to study in depth is that of social media», explains Abutalebi. «Above all, being able to understand whether the lack of social interactions and dialogues can be compensated for by the use of these new means. The positive effect of using social media on our brain is not yet clear. At the moment the negative ones have been studied the most. But we still don’t know what’s happening at the level brain plasticity and what possible changes may occur in our mind.”
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” he wrote Wittgenstein in 1921. It also applies in the other sense, and it is the one that concerns us most today: when words become thinner, the space in which we live shrinks, and with it what we are able to share with others. It costs something to start talking again. We must accept the unexpected, the pause that lasts too long, the wrong word that no one allows us to delete or listen to again before sending. But it is within that risk that the world expands again: one word at a time, in front of someone who can answer us.
