Diego Hidalgo, sociologist and writer, was one of the first Spanish thinkers to express his Orwellian concern regarding the technological future. He did so in the book ‘Anesthesiated’ (Catarata, 2021) and since then he has been working on promoting the Off Manifesto, a call to prevent humanity from losing control over digital uses and habits and take measures to avoid consequences such as the serious impact that smartphones are causing on the mental health of minors.
Master in International Relations from Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies) and in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, entrepreneur and creator of companies with an online presence, Hidalgo attends La Vanguardia from his office in Rabat (Morocco), where he resides. and serves as advisor to the Order of Malta in Morocco, the week following the launch of the manifesto signed by more than a hundred personalities from different fields such as economics, technology, law, education and health. The conversation is through Teams but the sound, ironies of technology, only comes through your mobile phone from the days before WhatsApp.
A curiosity. Have you never had a smartphone?
Never. It is easier not to start smoking than to quit smoking. When smartphones arrived I already had anxiety about email, because of the 120-130 messages a day I received, and I thought that at least with the computer I was connected only with who I wanted to be connected to. I had a physical sensation that the stress was rubbing off on me. Curiously, in recent years, studies have come out that conclude that levels of cortisol, the hormone responsible for stress, rise with the mere presence of a smartphone in a room. For me it was really a health issue.
In a week, has the Off Manifesto had an impact?
Many, we are receiving many requests for signatures that we are having a hard time processing in a very agile way, because more and more are arriving and we want to check that they are from real people. But we are happy for the support and we hope it is the beginning of a broader movement.
Is the goal to make people aware?
The effort we have to make is to become aware of the critical point we are reaching in relation to the increasingly sophisticated and powerful technology that surrounds us, and which is being used largely to exploit human vulnerabilities. This is being reflected in different areas, especially in the mental health of young people. Therefore, we are going to have to make a much more important effort of coordination and regulation to establish barriers and to reintroduce those necessary Off buttons that allow us to regain control over digital, make more proactive and conscious use of technology.
Should we take a stand against technology?
We are not against it, far from it. I myself am originally a technology entrepreneur. But people from very different backgrounds have joined this initiative because we believe that we have to use technology and not let it use us. It seems that if we want to benefit from the positive aspects of technology, we have to accept a package with the negative, and no, we must be more demanding to use this technology, and not accept these types of compromises.
How did you decide to promote the Off Manifesto?
Since I wrote ‘Anesthetized’ I see that we are losing even more control over technology. For me, this fight is vital because we are risking the future of our species, at least as a free species. Without idealizing the society in which we lived a few decades ago, it is true that we have been able to enjoy a certain level of freedom and well-being and I believe that that is in danger now. Since 2010, there has been a change in attitude towards social networks and a certain loss of control aggravated by the introduction of more artificial intelligence. Then there has been a great deterioration in mental health, especially among young people, which coincides with the introduction of smartphones, and these causal relationships between one thing and another are increasingly evident.
For example?
Last week the Cyber ??Guardians organization published research in which it is said that in Spain, from 1987 to 2021, mental health problems in those under 20 years of age have increased by 300%, with a very marked acceleration from the year 2012. In addition, Cyber ??Guardians cross-referenced mental health data with fiber optic deployment data by province and found that both things were correlated. But also when you talk to psychologists like Francisco Villar, head of the unit for the prevention and care of minor suicide in Sant Joan de Déu, who has also signed the manifesto, they tell you that in their daily clinical experience they see a very clear link between a thing and another. For several reasons, on the one hand, social networks serve to compare your life with those of others but, more generally, the indiscriminate use of the smartphone accustoms us to instant gratification and the brain is not calibrated for the happiness that results. of immediate action.
We had the image of HAL in 2001, a space odyssey and we were still confused, we expected the machine to rebel against humans, but it seems that algorithms that marginalize those who do not follow trends do more damage.
Yes Yes Yes. If you look at the manifesto, it is divided into three parts, and the second is called ‘What we want to avoid’ and it is about that, avoiding a world governed by machines, with a technology that reaches a level of autonomy that completely escapes human understanding and can lead us in directions not of our own choosing. And that may sound very science fiction, but deep down we are seeing, both individually and collectively, the fact that we are losing control. It is something gradual and progressive, which we may not realize, but I think that in the last 15-20 years we have been delegating to machines powers that we exercised, such as the use of memory, orientation… but especially in the In the last year we have relegated specific human functions such as the way of thinking, of constructing arguments, with the temptation that a machine will solve everything for you. So we have to put up clear barriers and define perimeters in which we do not want technology to enter our lives, even if that means that human beings lose efficiency and time, but still remain in control.
And how can we realize it?
That feeling that we are being permanently assisted by a co-pilot atrophies our capabilities. This is seen in universities, where students turn to ChatGTP for their work, when it is assumed that they are there to learn how to argue complex speeches. We are creating so many dependencies that, for example, it is not easy to unplug the machine in the financial markets, and if there is a cyber attack on the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona it is already too late to unplug. And there we realize that infrastructures and institutions are vulnerable.
And with that diagnosis, what can be done?
I precisely believe that the first step is awareness and if we are now at grade one we have to reach grade ten because the work ahead of us is so brutal… We are at a critical moment like that of climate change: the The effort and sacrifices we have to make are so brutal and the results will be seen in the long term that in many cases it is easier to close our eyes and say, well, let’s see what happens. The analogy with climate change is good because it is also a threat to our existence and needs awareness and because, and this is what I wanted to get at, individual actions are positive but insufficient, because we are faced with technologies designed to improve ourselves, we have to carry out an action much more collective.
Shall we start with mobile phones?
Many people gave their children a cell phone when they were ten years old due to ignorance of what it entails and the direct impact on mental health, cognitive functions and development, and also due to social pressure. And despite smartphones, the map of loneliness has exploded in Europe in recent years among adults and young people. Therefore, we have to develop a much more preventive vision. I was thinking about a study…
Which?
One from the University of Chicago, which was published in November, which showed that the same people who declared themselves incapable of leaving networks like Instagram or TikTok declared that they would pay so that not only they would have to leave them, but everyone else. This study is very powerful because it shows that there is a demand for collective change. The same study says that 64% of the most active TikTok users recognized that the platform had a negative impact on their well-being. So we need awareness, collective action and then some kind of decision. In schools, collective decisions must be made about the use of digital technologies. And it would also begin with the prohibition of micro-geolocated advertising, with which the ability to influence is bought and sold through personal data.
Another first step is to learn how to disconnect your cell phone?
Yes, yes, and now I speak as Diego Hidalgo and not as a promoter of the manifesto, I think we have enough evidence to ask for a ban on smartphones for minors. We see that the longer you delay the delivery of smartphones, the stronger the child’s mental health is. A study by an American organization Sapiens Lab establishes a direct correlation between the mental health of adults and the age at which they receive the smartphone. What we said before, we have at a private level learn to disconnect and press the off button.
What are the neurorights that you talk about in the manifesto?
In the future there will be more powerful technologies and one of them has to do with neuroscience, where there have been advances to allow the brain to be decrypted. They want to decode the information in your brain so that if they put a headband on you and you think about an elephant they will be able to project the elephant on a screen, but that can also go in the opposite direction, that is, induce feelings in you, of fear or whatever. If there is an indiscriminate deployment of this type of technology through non-invasive interfaces, such as headbands, or invasive interfaces, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink chips, which are inserted into our brain, we are exposed in an even more powerful way than now. One of the last barriers that still protected us is at risk, that of the privacy of the mind and this represents enormous challenges at the level of privacy and intimacy, but also at the political level, of access to truthful information. If a government or a company can read your thoughts, that is already an infinitely greater intrusion than what is happening now. Neurorights refer to new rights in the legal arsenal and involve the fact that these neuroscience applications are delimited to very specific fields, especially in the medical and therapeutic field.
