An economist in the Financial Times says that there is a brain capital recession in the world. In other words, our brain capital is shrinking. So what is happening, what does brain capital mean? Why is there a recession, what should we do? I will explain all these. Today, instead of stocks, instead of the economy, instead of the markets, let's focus on our brain capital. Because that is where we should invest. I regularly follow the American economic press to understand what is happening in the markets. Financial Times is also one of the important sources I consult. There was an article there that was completely outside our traditional subjects. The human mind is in recession. The author is also an interesting person, Tej Parikh, who is actually an economist. I think he also found the subject interesting and tried to interpret what is happening in our brains with economic concepts. The subtitle is technology poisoning the health, capacity and skills of our brains.
The author first introduces us to a very interesting concept called brain capital. In other words, we have heard about money capital, we have heard about human capital, I really liked brain capital as a term. He has also defined it as; the total value of the health, capacity and skills of our brains. Health means not having Alzheimer's, not having tumors in our brains, all the functions of our brains being in place, their capacity, different types of intelligence, emotional intelligence, mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, all of these. Skills are what we can do with this brain, our language learning skills, our communication skills, our ability to understand what we read. The author calls the sum of these as brain capital. This is the definition of brain capital and we are using it less and less. Many solutions such as artificial intelligence and automation show that we will use it even less in the future.
As of today, when we look at it, 50% of all activities in the world are carried out by people, the other by vehicles, machines and computers. They estimate that this will drop to 33% in 2030. There are many factors that erode our brain capital. The first of these is mental illnesses, the main factor that erodes our brain capital is of course our brain health. When we say brain health, depression is a health problem to that, Alzheimer's is a health problem to that, and there is an incredible increase in these types of illnesses. For example, when we look at depression, the World Health Organization says that depression is currently the most important cause of disability. It shows that the rate of depression cases seen since 1990 has increased by 90%. Incredible, I have already observed this in my circle. I have another interesting observation. Maybe you think the same thing, it spreads to these ages. In other words, the number of people dealing with depression since childhood is increasing. I think digital pollution is among the reasons for this. I will touch on it again at the end of my article.
On the other hand, we are getting older. We are gradually turning into an older population. This problem exists all over the world. Because fewer children are born and the average life expectancy is increasing. At the same time, we also need to work for longer years. Retirement ages are getting older all over the world and the income we earn when we retire is not suitable for living a comfortable life. Therefore, even if we retire, we need to work and continue to work. So what can be done at older ages? Of course, more cerebral mental work can be done instead of physical work. But there is a problem there too. There are also diseases that melt our brain capital. Alzheimer's is one of the most important of these. There is an increase in different types of Alzheimer's and dementia all over the world. As I mentioned, both the aging of the population and many factors that damage our brain capital also increase these types of disorders, and these dramatically reduce our efficiency and productivity.
Remember, I stated that the author of the article is an economist. That is why he evaluated the effects of this loss of brain capital with economic concepts. They estimate that factors such as mental health disorders, substance addictions, and neurological diseases have an impact of around 5 trillion dollars on the world economy today. This will increase to 16 trillion dollars by 2030. 5 trillion dollars is a very large amount of money, equal to the gross national product of Germany. It will reach 16 trillion dollars in 2030. If I am not mistaken, America is a 25 trillion dollar economy. It has such a big impact. The fact that we are becoming more and more inefficient and can use our brains less is not very beneficial to the world economy, and we have losses in every age group. For example, even people between the ages of 10 and 20 lose 1 to 3 years of their lives due to the problems I just described in their brains. This gets worse in the 30s, 40s and 50s, exceeding 3 years. In later years, it starts to regress a little.
On the other hand, of course, as we get older, the total number of years we lose increases. For example, when we reach the age of 80-90, there is serious damage to our mental activities and these are the ages when some of us may still need to work. On top of all this, there is the issue of the attention economy. What is the attention economy? Everyone is trying to get your attention, influencers are trying to get your attention, television programs are trying to get your attention, social media platforms are trying to get your attention. This is called the attention economy. It is actually the largest economy in the world. Because if your attention can be caught, they can sell you something, they can show you ads, they make money.
The attention economy is growing very rapidly. Currently, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are added to the digital world per day. I don't know what 2.5 quintillion bytes means, but it seems like a big number. After all, while we spent around 9 hours a day on screens in 2012, today it is close to 11 hours. When I say today, I mean 2019 data. I think since then, with the effects of Covid, the increase in screen diversity and the growth of the digital economy, we are now exposed to even more screens. Let me say for myself, I easily spend 12-13 hours a day on screens of different sizes, namely mobile phones, tablets, laptops, computers and televisions. I am not proud of this, I am unhappy about this and today I understand that it eats away at my brain capital, but that is the case.
When we look at the world, we see that the time we spend in front of screens is constantly increasing. I think if we look at the situation with internet usage, we can see how quickly it is escalating and the time we spend in front of these digital screens has a negative effect on our brain capital. There is a distraction aspect, I am sure you all experience this. I see this even more in my children in particular. They have more and more difficulty focusing on something. An interesting contradiction emerges here. Because when the World Economic Forum asks employers, employers believe that factors such as creativity, endurance, analytical thinking and questioning are now very important, and they are looking for such people. However, our skills seem to be declining. Recent studies show that we are in serious decline in literacy and numeracy skills. Smartphones and computer screens have such an effect. Because we need to do much less calculations, we do them there. We need to keep much less information in mind, we need to think much less. Especially since the emergence of artificial intelligence, these have become even worse.
Because of all this, our mental performance is gradually declining. Science writer David Robson says that we observed that IQ scores were increasing throughout the world for most of the twentieth century, but now they are not. In fact, they are declining in many places. Of course, educated people, decent people want to say that we are becoming retarded. The numbers are slightly different from country to country. For example, in some countries, people have measured their literacy skills and numerical skills, that is, basic math skills. Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany are on the right track. The Scandinavians in particular are doing great. But when we look at the remaining countries, we see declines in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, New Zealand, South Korea, Hungary, the USA, Israel, the Czech Republic, Austria and even Japan. The decline is particularly severe in subjects such as reading comprehension and understanding ideas. They are doing a little better in mathematical skills, but our intelligence declines in every way. Not only our intelligence declines, but also our memory usage capacity declines. Because we think about more and more subjects like this; Google already has that. That information is always there. Why should I remember it and the brain automatically programs itself to remember fewer things. Therefore, our ability to use our memory also declines. For example, I have at most 4-5 mobile phones in my mind. I cannot even remember the phone numbers of many of my close friends or even family members. Isn't it wonderful? On the one hand, artificial intelligence is pressing on this side and we are needed less and less. The areas where we will be needed the most are analytical thinking, creativity and we are in a serious loss there and this loss seems to accelerate in the coming years. So what can be done about this? How can we protect our brain capital? It is important to do the straightforward things that come to mind, less screen time, more reading, more time with friends in nature, more activities that require long-term focus, such as playing chess. All of these can help prevent our brain capital from melting away. I believe that brain energy and brain capital are very close issues.
When our energy decreases, our brain capital also melts. The advice I just mentioned is actually completely logical advice. We just need to apply it in a disciplined manner and there are some very practical suggestions. It would be beneficial to at least consider them. For example, one of the things I have been doing lately is not looking at my phone first thing when I wake up in the morning, I try to spend at least half an hour without my phone. At least my brain capital does not melt early in the morning. What do you do to protect your brain capital? Does it melt? How much does it melt? What do you do about your children's brain capital? If you have good ideas, suggestions or problems, please write them below, I am definitely waiting with interest.
