As we hurtle with delight into a future where a wristwatch can tell us how many steps we’ve taken each day and a few taps on a screen can bring up a video chat with relatives several time zones away, we need to be more mindful of the costs of technology.
That was the message that UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield and health economist Anusuya Chatterjee delivered at a Zócalo/UCLA event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles on Monday night before a capacity audience.
To address the topic of the evening — “Is digital technology destroying our health?” — moderator Chad Terhune, a senior correspondent at California Healthline and Kaiser Health News, asked panel members, “All this digital technology — this explosion we’ve all seen in our hands — is it doing more harm than good?”
A biobehavioral scientist, Block said there are tangible benefits when people can monitor their own vital signs with such ease and take more responsibility for their own health care. But an excessive amount of screen time, especially at night, is starting to take a toll, he warned.
“Perhaps the most dramatic impact is the reduction in the amount of sleep,” the chancellor said. Fifty years ago, the average adult got eight and a half hours of sleep; now we average less than seven hours a night, he explained. Bright light reduces levels of the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep, and decreases leptin, which makes you feel full. At the same time, bright light increases ghrelin, which makes you feel hungry.
So more time with computers and phones can make us gain weight not just because we’re more sedentary, but because of their effect on our sleep cycles, according to the chancellor.
Sleep “is a primitive process, but absolutely necessary,” Block said.