Neuroscientist Blames Social Networking

“Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users.” Stay tuned, this and more deadly news at 11.

Once again, parents are being warned that something else in the world will harm/kill or otherwise damage their children. A neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, from the UK is claiming that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centered.

Kids and Computers. CC on Flickr, Tanya Ryno

I’ve read the article in full three times, and I am still having trouble taking the whole thing seriously.

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. ‘My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing 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.’ [source]

I’m certainly not sure that I agree with this, but then, I admit, I am not a mother of young children. I have friends with children, for sure, and some of those children are old enough to play video games, watch “fast-paced tv” and are active on the computer – primarily on sites their parents approve – and none of those kids live for the moment anymore than the rest of us, or have a shorter attention span than anyone else.

Greenfield has taken her argument all the way to the House of Lords debate last month. She’s still arguing that all of these technologies and current communication methods will leave a generation of people with poor attention spans.

‘I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,’ she said. [source]

While psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think, no one else seems to be arguing so strongly against these seemingly dangerous communication methods.

The whole attitude of “the sky is falling” we’re seeing around these social networking sites and “newfangled” communications tactics makes me roll my eyes. If you’re seeing a short attention span in your child, and they are spending a ton of time in front of a computer, a video game or a tv show, perhaps it’s more important that you find something else for them to do, or you to do with them, rather than blaming social networking websites. Again, I say this without having children of my own, so I am in no way telling anyone how to raise their child.

What I am doing, however, is saying, as someone who works and specializes in the social networking/marketing field, that the entire blame can not be placed entirely at the feet of these communication tactics.

/steps off soapbox, for now.