Social Media and Our Minds
While perusing the Internet this morning I came across an article entitled “Are Twitter and Facebook Affecting How We Think?” which caused me to think about how my generation, well, thinks. The article’s thesis, that as the young generation spends more and more time online using social media their core mental processes are actually altered immediately rang true. Think of the last time you read an article online. Did you read it all the way through, or click on a link that peaked your interest and then skim?
The other day, I went on Wikipedia to learn a bit about my newest TV addiction, Mad Men, and I barely spent 30 seconds on the main page before clicking the link to the page of lead actor, Joe Hamm. As I skimmed the article, I noticed that I was drawn towards the blue, underlined links, as if waiting to be whisked away by the next, somewhat interesting topic to take my fancy. Indeed, I almost found it difficult to read through the entire article without clicking on a new link. Within five minutes, I viewed the pages of Joe Hamm, the St. Louis Cardinals, Don Draper, Betty Draper, and Grace Kelly, learning something new about each topic, but not all that much about any single one.
Wikipedia lends itself to this sort of distractible knowledge consumption, but is it possible that using Wikipedia and social media alters the way the human brain works? At a neural level, the idea of Long Term Potentiating can shed some light on this. Essentially, as two neurons communicate more often, the signal between them becomes stronger, explaining why practice makes perfect, and how long term memories form. If we think of our use of social media and Wikipedia as “practice,” then the more we use them, the better we become at taking in a broad amount of somewhat unrelated information and the harder it becomes to focus on one coherent thing. We may demand the instant satisfaction of learning what we want to learn when we want to learn it, instead of waiting for the long, earned payoff of a novel.
While the article argues that this change in thinking might be a bad thing for our generation, making it harder for us to follow a long argument and develop an informed critique, I believe there are some benefits to this new style of learning as well.
- We move more easily between tasks, implying that inevitable distractions at work will not sidetrack us.
- We quickly pick up on basic concepts, enabling us to jump right in to a new project or idea.
- We are more adaptable, a key skill in the ever-changing world of technology.
Like most things in life, we should strive to achieve a balance between old and new. Too much focus on long texts and print might make us more rigid and closed minded in our ways, while too much time on the Internet could indeed lead to attention deficiencies.
To the younger generation, spend a little more of your time away from the web, or at least commit yourself to finishing a long article to achieve that balance. And to our elders, take some time to familiarize yourself with new trends online, and you will be better able to adapt to the ever-changing environment we live in.
Here’s the article that inspired my blog. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7858189/Are-Twitter-and-Facebook-affecting-how-we-think.html
