The phenomenal popularity of social networking Web sites may help the online masses forge new acquaintances while staying in contact with friends and family, but a leading UK neuroscientist believes such activity is potentially “infantilising” the development of young brains.
UK brain scientist says Facebook and Twitter could infantilise the 21st-century mind. Image: frostnova/Flickr.
Specifically, Lady Susan Greenfield, a professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, claims that social networking could lead to users characterised by “short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise, and a shaky sense of identity.”
According to Greenfield, who’s also the director of the Royal Institute, the British government has thus far failed to properly assess the broader cultural and psychological ramifications of online interaction through the likes of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.
Speaking before the House of Lords, Lady Greenfield said that while interactions and experiences garnered by younger users of such online services, “tap into the basic brain systems for delivering pleasurable experience,” they are also “devoid of cohesive and long-term significance.”
In highlighting the “fast action and reaction” virtual world experiences associated with online social networks, Greenfield said users could potentially suffer attention-deficit disorders when the brain is faced with the real-world reality that similarly speedy responses are not often forthcoming.
“It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,” she proposed.
Citing a teacher of 30 years who’s already noticed a decline in pupil attention spans and communicative understanding in the classroom, Greenfield said, “it is hard to believe how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brain, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations.”
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