The subject line is a play on a meme that is going around my neck of the woods these days, it seems to mean all manner of things, all depending on who you you ask. This meme has been joined by another overnight. No, not a baby… but the idea that the ‘net is infantilizing our brains. Or at least the brains of our young. Sounds like the arguement against comics, rock and roll and TV right? Well, here may be the science.
I spotted the first article last night, talking about Facebook being bad for the brain. I didn’t really have time to explore it, and since it was mentioning Facebook in the title, I ignored it as something that might be of interest later. But this morning I saw another article with the same brain rotting meme. This has got to be something interesting now. Each of the articles talks about an interview with Baroness Susan Greenfield did with the UK paper, the Daily Mail.
The Guardian article seems to really look at the instant gratification factor of the SNS/IM world – seemingly as addictive as another video vbased reward system that is popular in the Nevada desert – and the Live Science article looks at the disconnect between face to face based human interactions and screen based ones.
I hope the Baroness can publish this work in some manner shortly.
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