Twitter or Facebook?

Could Twitter be turning us into birdbrains?GORDON FARRER
September 12, 2009
THIS just in from the Department of the Sky is Falling: Twitter makes you dumber. Dr Tracy Alloway, cognitive psychologist and director of the Centre for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, says that the ''instant'' nature of texting, Twitter and YouTube is not healthy for working memory.

In a talk at the British Science Festival last week, she said working memory - the ability to recall and apply information - was the real basis of learning and more important to success and happiness in life than IQ.

''On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information [that is] very succinct,'' said Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving your nerve connections.''

It was a revelation shadow treasurer Joe Hockey might not have wanted to hear. Hockey sent five messages to his followers on the micro-blogging social networking tool during question time this week.

On Tuesday he opened his foray into digital democracy with ''sitting in question time wondering if tanner will actually answer a question''. A minute later he followed up with ''now the pm is coaching tanner with answers … get real guys''.

In her comments about Twitter, Dr Alloway noted evidence suggesting that extensive texting has been associated with low IQ scores. (Whether it causes them or reflects them was not clear.)

She also argued that the ''tyranny of technology'' - with aids such as speed dial meaning we no longer have to remember phone numbers - was generally making us dumber.

On the other hand, keeping up with friends on Facebook, doing Sudoku puzzles and playing video games that involved strategy - she cited the Total War series - might improve working memory.

''I'm not saying they're good for your socialisation skills, but they do make you use your working memory,'' she said.

So, ditch Twitter and jump on to Facebook. Smarten up. Except …

According to Dr Aric Sigman, fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, the news on Facebook is not good, either. Dr Sigman argues that online social networking may be displacing face-to-face contact and that lack of social connection can be associated with physiological changes, increased illness and higher premature mortality.

And leading neuroscientist Dr Susan Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Oxford University, has made the case that social networking behaviour infantilises the mind, shortens attention spans, makes users susceptible to sensationalism and damages their sense of identity. Shoot-'em-up computer games, she has said, reduce players' ability to empathise.

The technology-is-bad-for-you camp is not new. Experts in brain plasticity have warned for years of the potential detrimental effects of fast-motion electronics and behaviours on brain development and function.

''Any technology that we use rewires our brains - pencil and paper rewire our brains,'' says Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself. ''The problem with electronic technologies,'' he warns, ''is that they're extremely compatible with the brain because the brain uses them as prosthetic extensions very easily and takes on the characteristics of those technologies.''

The result, he says, is that if people aren't inundated with novelty, they get bored and are unable to pay attention.

Putting aside such concerns, technology evangelists suspect there is an element of the Luddite in any knee-jerk reaction that says technology must be bad if it changes the way our brains work.

Could it also be possible, they suggest, that we are at the start of a process in which the human brain will evolve from an organ confused by the cacophony and activity around it into one that is sped up, sharpened, able to multi-task in ways we can't imagine?

There's bad news on that front, too.

Research from Stanford University published last month found that good multi-tasking is a myth; the brain can effectively perform only one task or process one piece of information at a time.

Chronic multi-taskers find it impossible to ignore irrelevant information, reducing their efficiency at completing tasks.

They might appear better at juggling tasks but, the Stanford research showed, their performance is considerably weaker than those who concentrate on a single task.

Which puts the kybosh on Joe Hockey's response to suggestions that tweeting from the frontbench could distract him from debate in the chamber.

''I know it's hard to believe that males can do this,'' said Hockey, ''but we can walk and chew gum at the same time.''

Gordon Farrer is technology editor.