It’s nearly impossible to go anywhere in public in the United States today and not end up on a surveillance camera. CCTV cameras are everywhere and watching all the time. New research from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has found that constant surveillance has a big impact on your brain. It also has the potential to drive some people crazy.
Researchers at UTS set up an experiment to study how being on surveillance cameras impacts the ability to detect when another person is watching you. That’s one of the core functions of human perception. We use it to tell when someone is watching us and to pick up on social cues during conversations. In short, it’s how we tell friends from foes.
The study showed that when people are exposed to conspicuous surveillance, they automatically become hyper-aware of faces. Even people who say they don’t care about surveillance showed a marked difference in how their brains process information. They can detect facial stimuli a full second before someone who is not under surveillance.
The problem, according to the researchers, is that people with tendencies toward certain mental illnesses can be triggered by surveillance. CCTV cameras put everyone’s brain into a high-alert status. That could have a profound impact on people with early-stage psychosis or social anxiety disorder.
As surveillance cameras become increasingly obvious, the researchers worry that they could have a major mental load on people. While they’re not calling for the abandonment of surveillance, they do wonder what impact it will have on society and mental health as more cameras are installed on every lamppost and in every store.
