It seems crazy to a large portion of our society that there were times, before the HELLO of internet.. - well maybe just that there were times before the HELLO of internet? It could be just my fresh-faced youth that means I find it weird whenever I am reminded that the internet was only established on the larger scale in the early 1990s. In fact, there is only about one generation of people who have grown up with idea of logging on, clicking refresh and replacing poor grammar with abbreviations for poor grammar. However, being the giant lumps of human-putty we all are, it's always good to learn the effect it has on the brain - God's best playdough creation. I will probably never study psychology, but Professor Susan Greenfield did! According to her calculations there are definitely some downsides to the whole World of Warcraft, friend request-dominated life approach. In short:
- The extent of many youths' screen life, including computer games, internet browsing and Facebook presents the fairly likely danger of "infantilising" our brains, "keeping it in a childlike state of a short attention span, with literal images, no metaphors of abstract concepts, no sense of narrative, no empathy, no consequences - just sensations." And all this, just a click away!
- Social networking sites risk inhibiting the development of understanding of real-life communication, as it fails to offer social interaction skills such as judging tone of voice, body language or visual cues. Unlike anything that involves leaving your house, most technology-related past times are solitary pursuits. This lack of experience of galavanting in fields and other real-world activities runs the risk of the average youth failing to collect a smorgasbord of experiences that make everyone different (aww). Our 'brains' are all, biologically, the same yet our 'minds' are different.
- Demands on our memory are also becoming rarer than a chinese polar bear for some, in an age where we can google any knowledge we come to need.
The main part of the problem is the prefrontal cortex, which is a probably really really small part of your head that deals with complex reasoning, interpreting social behaviour, decision-making and the expression of personality. Lack of development of the prefrontal cortex is often characterized by obsessiveness, a lack of idea-generation and is found in schizophrenics and the obese. The stunted awareness of cause and effect points to an obvious explanation for a rise in violence amongst teenagers, as well as rise in obesity (I'm not sure what's worse ho ho ho).
There are clearly more dangers to your average Facebook stalking session than forgetting to press the 'Clear History' button................
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