Are social networking sites literally warping the minds of the young?
...while the sites are popular - and extremely profitable - a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good.
Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated exposure could effectively 'rewire' the brain.
Computer games and fast-paced TV shows were also a factor, she said.
'We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist,' she told the Mail yesterday.
'My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.'
Her comments echoed those she made during a House of Lords debate earlier this month. Then she argued that exposure to computer games, instant messaging, chat rooms and social networking sites could leave a generation with poor attention spans.
I don't think children are the only ones in danger. I feel it in myself: prolonged mental focus has become a lot more difficult, and it's largely because, in recent years, I've logged more man-hours on the computer than with my nose in a book. Grad school might have been its own form of brainwashing in some ways, but it did have the virtue of disciplining my mind, forcing me to absorb large volumes of information in slow, deliberate, protracted doses: to grasp the subject matter, there was simply no substitute for reading.
This has always been the danger posed by cyberspace: it's a universe governed by few rules and open to the whims of all who visit it. If cyberspace has one advantage over TV, it's that TV demands almost total passivity (a fact cleverly satirized in the recent spate of Hulu.com commercials starring Alec Baldwin and Elisha Dushku), whereas cyberspace requires some proactivity on the user's part. But this doesn't absolve cyberspace: the user navigates it from roughly the same "market" perspective as the channel surfer: if you don't like where you are, navigate away and find something more entertaining.
Reading a novel requires more than passivity; it requires the reader's imagination to fill in the visual details, to generate empathy for the characters (a book has no musical score to manipulate your emotions), and even to speculate on how the plot will unfold based on what one already knows. It also requires patience and focus, virtues that have little bearing in cyberspace, which is increasingly becoming a visual medium, like TV.
At the same time, inculcation in the cyberspatial way of thinking does grant a user certain advantages, including the ability to think on one's feet, to adapt to new situations and resolve problems with puzzle-solving swiftness, and to search quickly for data at need. But this comes at a cost. As the above-linked article notes:
Psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think. They point out that students no longer need to plan essays before starting to write - thanks to word processors they can edit as they go along. Satellite navigation systems have negated the need to decipher maps.
I fully sympathize with this sentiment, even as I participate in the downward spiral. My own map-reading skills could use a kickstart, and because I've spent a large chunk of my life interacting with some sort of word processor, I'm guilty of editing on the fly instead of planning as deliberately as I should. But according to the article, it's worse for kids:
A study by the Broadcaster Audience Research Board found teenagers now spend seven-and-a-half hours a day in front of a screen.
Educational psychologist Jane Healy believes children should be kept away from computer games until they are seven. Most games only trigger the 'flight or fight' region of the brain, rather than the vital areas responsible for reasoning.
Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, said: 'We are seeing children's brain development damaged because they don't engage in the activity they have engaged in for millennia.
'I'm not against technology and computers. But before they start social networking, they need to learn to make real relationships with people.'
I agree: computers and cyberspace pose dangers on several fronts, including the areas of social skills and intellectual development. Parents will have to be watchful of their children (and adults will have to become more self-aware as well). But despite a need for circumspection, we also need to face the fact that cyberspace is here to stay, and is not merely the sum of its disadvantages.
_
No comments:
Post a Comment