Humanity’s greatest invention is turning you into a lonely, brain dead asshole.

With that fancy rectangle in your pocket, every fact in recorded history can be found with a single touch. But humanity’s greatest invention is turning you into a lonely, brain dead asshole.

>> The Internet is literally altering our brains

Mom used to say, “Watching T.V. will rot your brain,” and goddamn she was right. While studying MRI scans of Internet-addicted users, researchers discovered abnormalities in brain matter which could make it harder for Internet junkies to temporarily store and retrieve information. Meanwhile, other screen-related white matter reductions in the brain could impair decision-making abilities — including those that tell you to log off and return to the real world. And a recent study showed that unplugging from technology for just one day can give some users physical and mental junkie-style withdrawal symptoms. But you can quit whenever, no biggie.

>> It’s causing us to be self-absorbed assholes

We didn’t need to tell you this one, slick: Social media is making you into a narcissistic asshat. An Australian study profiling a group of 37,000 college students found that narcissistic personality traits rose just as quickly as obesity rates from the 1980s to the present. And in the study, “Who Uses Facebook?” researchers found “users have higher levels of total narcissism, exhibitionism, and leadership than Facebook nonusers. In fact, it could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual’s need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behavior. Nobody wants to look at that many pictures of your face. Be real.

>> It’s screwing up how we think and remember

Thanks to the Buzzfeed-style listicle, we’re basically unlearning how to think critically and read deeply. Even a rather short sesh of social media browsing can lead to information overload, making it harder to file away information in your memory, according to research from Sweden. And a study from Stanford suggests that the brains of people who are constantly bombarded with several streams of electronic information (Tweets, Snapchats, emails) find it difficult to pay attention and switch from one job to another efficiently. When was the last time you focused on just one thing?

Super depressing stats:

5
New Facebook profiles are created every second

33%
The percentage of all photos taken by people aged 18-24 that are selfies

1.55 Billion
Monthly active Facebook users

300 Million
Photos uploaded to Facebook per day