Youth is wasted on the young – and recent reports prove it

This week, poet and artist Frieda Hughes reflects on the news that students will spend up to 25 years on their phones – and how digital devices shrink their brains

BRAINS

I have read that your brain is shrinking.

The socials are whittling you away as you watch TikTok and Instagram,

The mind candy canker of all the irresistible memes.

Lost lives are lived to influence you with images of desire or destruction,

Presenting perfection, or vice, or porn, or hippies doing up houses,

And dogs doing intelligent things, all for likes and a possible income.

Freed from the labour that connects your synapses

And reboots your will to live,

Your cerebellum will shrivel your muscle mass

And your amygdala in overdrive will increase your anxiety. Your phone

Cuts out birdsong and speech and the noise of the world turning

That feeds your understanding of others in real time.

Your attention to detail as you funnel your mind

Into your hand-held screen will rob you of twenty-five years

And your freedom of thought. A plug in the wall

Recharges the various dictatorships under which you now exist

That narrow the channels in your head,

Squeeze the juice out of your skull

And leave you less than you could have been – should have been.

Give me your wasted years – I know how to use them.