Is Social Media Making Infants of Us All?
February 25, 2009 Health, Internet, Technology
The Guardian recently featured an article by Patrick Wintour on the risks that some social media sites might carry. The article discusses a report done by Lady Greenfield warning us that sites like Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter risk infantilizing the mind, leaving it characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, an inability to empathize, and a shaky sense of identity. The Lady goes on to say that government bodies have not yet looked at the broad cultural and psychological effects that on-screen relationships may have on the human mind and, more importantly, the minds of children who have yet to develop the core skills necessary to function in society.
While I can certainly understand Lady Greenfield’s concerns, I’m curious to know whether these on-screen relationships are only a problem for children. From what I’ve observed over the last decade across the English-speaking internet, there is definitely a trend among people of all ages to over-sensationalize seemingly ordinary events and to have a disturbing lack empathy for people in distress. On top of this, the apparent necessity to multi-task in everything we do has certainly had an effect on our attention spans. Gone are the days of sitting down to read a book or newspaper. Instead our minds are constantly wandering the realms of connectivity wondering if there has been an update to one of the many communications mediums we enjoy, be it IRC, Twitter, Plurk, email, or something else entirely. Heck, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m guilty of putting an important project on hold for ten to fifteen minutes while helping someone out on Twitter or IRC. If an email comes in from someone that I need to talk to, then I’ll again put my work on hold to see what they have to say and get back to them.
But is this the fault of social media?
Enough About You, Let’s Talk About Me
What I appreciate about Lady Greenfield’s report is that she does not seem to undermine the potential benefits that social media sites have. Far too many reports have been published recently that claim social media is the tool of the Devil, but using much more politically correct terms. Instead, she suggests that social media and other on-screen activities may not be appropriate for younger children who have not yet learned the necessary skills to interact with people in the real world. She also mentions that these relatively new habits are changing children’s brains in such a way that the next generations of people will be far more selfish than any other before it. Considering the multi-trillion dollar scams that have been revealed across the world over the last five years, I find it hard to believe that humans could be greedier than the ones that exist today, but this does raise a question: Is the over-protectionism displayed by many parents around the world contributing to this “infantilism”?
Although my wife and I do not yet have children, we’ve already had several disagreements regarding how much freedom they might enjoy at various ages. I hope that my children will be technologically savvy by the time they’re old enough to start school, but I also hope that they’ll see technology as a tool to leverage their skills and interests rather than some sort of device that promotes and engenders escapism from reality. Sure, the occasional game is alright, but there needs to be a good amount of time spent in the real world, too.
As it stands, many parents do not want their children outside “roaming the streets,” as it were, because the world has been painted as a very dangerous and scary place. So, to protect their children from predators, both imaginary and real, many parents have their children come straight home after school, some spend time at a friend’s house, or go to some sort of institution/daycare. There is very little freedom outside of the zones that the parent has defined as being safe. Never in my life have I seen so many parks sit idle across the world despite the high number of school-age children that might live in that neighborhood. As a result, many children are awarded ample time and opportunity to engross themselves in the virtual worlds that have been created both in games and online rather than the very real world outside. Going one step further, this could also be contributing to the disturbingly high number of people who are considered over-weight from a very young age. There’s usually a lot of food and snacks at home, but not so many outside.
If children can’t go outside to work off their excess energy, make friends, make mistakes, get into arguments, injure themselves, learn to cooperate, play team sports, and other fundamental kids activities, how can they learn the core skills that Lady Greenfield is warning we, as a society, are losing?
The Multi-Threaded Brain
Lady Greenfield posits that our complete infatuation with screen-based technologies this past decade may be linked to the three-fold increase in prescriptions for methylphenidate, a drug that is often given to people with Attention-Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder (ADHD). Whether there is any correlation or not has yet to be determined, but it doesn’t seem likely that we could blame only gaming and social media sites for this spike in methylphenidate consumption. TV has played a big role in modifying our concentration patterns as our programs are often broken up every few minutes by 15, 30, and 60-second advertisements that (potentially) forces us to put our thinking on hold. Some TV shows, such as Family Guy, have even gone so far as to make the constant story interruptions a key theme in the design of each episode. Unless we’re watching an educational documentary on a publicly funded or specialized channel, there will almost always be some sort of interruption that forces us to break concentration. Even then, we are often hit with some sort of advertisement in one of the corners telling us about some other program we might want to watch in the future, breaking us away from the current narrative or idea.
Unfortunately, for intellectuals like Lady Greenfield, multi-tasking and digital social interaction is here to stay. That said, we as a society are still learning and adapting the technologies to suit our needs. If trends continue, we will undoubtedly learn how to better focus our concentration skills across several thought-paths. From there, we will be in a better position to train our children in the ever-important skill of using our newly multi-threaded brains to solve complex problems while simultaneously presenting a report during a business meeting, reading a text message from the home refrigerator kindly reminding us to buy milk on the way home, and double-checking some social media site to see if there’s anything Digg-worthy to read during the next break.
Who knows, perhaps ADHD is just a sign that people’s brains are ready to become multi-threaded … we just need to learn how to harness it.
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You can read Patrick Wintour’s article on The Guardian’s website here: Facebook and Bebo Risk ‘Infantilising’ the Human Mind