Mind, Machine, and Meaning:
Living Intentionally in the Digital Age

Course Code: COG SCI 175
Units: 3 
Pre-Requisites: None
Instructor: Dr. Sahar Yousef [syousef@berkeley.edu]

Course Description

The average 18-year-old in the United States is currently projected to spend 93% of their remaining free time looking at a screen. Assuming a 90-year life expectancy, that’s 26 full years.

While technology can, of course, empower and enable us to achieve and connect with others more than we ever imagined, it can also exploit and undermine our cognitive abilities and our mental health. 

When the Netflix blockbuster The Social Dilemma came out in 2020, we unambiguously saw how technology and social media companies intentionally made their products addictive to extract maximum profits. By optimizing for two factors, (1) finding myriad ways to get users to come back to their platforms and (2) once back, getting them to spend as much time on screen as possible, these companies succeeded in winning the battle for our finite time and attention.

Current data suggests: 

1. Unintentional technology use can lead to a lonely and unfulfilling life, as well as have a negative impact on cognitive function.

2. Fully abstaining from these technologies is impractical (and also unnecessary). 

• After all, we need our phones to communicate with people, look up information, navigate places, take photos, pay for goods and services, etc. 

3. AI is an amplifier,  meaning it will increase the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of technology use. UC Berkeley students (and CogSci students in particular) need to be equipped with the most current research and have the tools to create a healthy relationship with technology in order to shape the future. 
   

There has to be a way to “have our cake and eat it too”. In other words, we assert that it’s possible to have a healthy, sustainable relationship with technology (one where the technology serves us and our goals vs. us serving the technology and its goals).

Course Overview

This course begins with taking a hard look at the data around screen time and social media use and conducting a baseline evaluation of your current screen time usage, habits, and patterns. We’ll discuss the science of digital addiction and how it’s become normalized for all of us to experience some level of digital dependence. We will dive deeply into the effects of excessive and unintentional screen time on life quality, cognitive function, social connection, and overall mental health.

We’ll explore The Attention Economy (in other words, how we got to today), the business models of large technology and social media companies, and the downstream cultural impacts of these models and incentives. We’ll then provide a clear definition and path to becoming more intentional with technology and review research-backed strategies for enhancing your focus, optimizing your content consumption, being more creative, increasing the quality of your sleep, and calibrating your identity in a world with so many online and external comparisons. 

We’ll end the course by thinking critically about how the AI revolution will change what it means to be human, how to remain competitive in the job market, and practical strategies for leveraging AI to learn better and be more productive while preserving your agency and judgment.

Course Objectives

This course is designed to teach critical thinking, moral reasoning, and behavioral science literacy under the umbrella of digital well-being. It is also built around sustained behavioral change and crafted to help you create a healthy, sustainable relationship with technology. If you put in the requisite effort, you will leave with a permanent foundation of new habits around tech use, AI, focus, productivity, and social connection, along with a personalized set of strategies to better manage the increasing demands you will likely experience in life. Please be prepared to make adjustments to your daily life, your relationship with technology, and experience occasional (and safe) discomfort…this is the point! We anticipate that the applied nature of the course and the accountability measures we have put in place will make it substantially easier to make desired life and habit adjustments than if you were to attempt to make the same changes on your own. 

However, if you are simply looking for a course where you can passively attend lectures, but not be asked to change or do anything differently, then this course will not be a good fit for you. 

We will address the following questions using the following methods: 

1. The scientific method and critical review of research publications

2. Social, economic, and political discourse

3. Personal experience: 

• What is the impact of excessive and unintentional screen time and social media use on quality of life, cognitive function, and social connection?

• What does it mean to have a positive and sustainable relationship with technology? What does it mean to live well and find meaning in an age of accelerating technological advancement?

• How do media algorithms work, and what impact do they have on political divisiveness, information vacuums, and society? 

• How can we use AI appropriately and leverage its potential while balancing human judgment and critical thinking? What is Artificial Intelligence better at than Human Intelligence, and vice versa?

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Understand the basic mechanisms of addiction in the human brain and how those manifest in various kinds of digital addiction.

• Evaluate their own screen time data and usage patterns, and identify adjustments that they can make to improve their relationship with technology.

• Understand the principles of biology and cognitive science that govern how to effectively work, study, rest, and sleep for enhanced productivity and well-being.

• Feel confident in their ability to apply AI intentionally to their academic and personal pursuits, and have a coherent philosophy of responsible AI use.