Forums

Posted: 02-11-2011 12:17 Post subject:

Facebook’s impact on the brain
By Dr Robert Clowes
Battle of Ideas, Science & Technology
Tuesday, 1 November 2011 at 11:05 am

The idea that the internet is having profound effects on our brain is back in the news this week with findings presented in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that there are correlations between the density of grey matter in certain brain areas and the number of friends both offline and through social networks. The real implications of these findings is itself another grey area as although the correlation is likely important, it is not known whether those with denser grey matter in right superior temporal sulcus tend to have more friends, whether increased density is caused by the use of social network sites like Facebook, or whether some third factor might be involved. But it is easy to imagine a thousand experimentalists are now dreaming up studies to try to probe these relationships.

In fact, findings that parts of the brain can indeed be restructured rapidly by learning new tasks is nothing new. Notable mention here goes to the hippocampus of cabbies growing as they learn the job (at least in the days before SatNavs) but learning almost any skill, from writing to playing Frisbee will make changes in brain circuitry. Nicholas Carr´s recent book The Shallows made much of the finding that novice internet users’ brains can also be rapidly restructured by a few hours learning about using web-browsers. Considering such research has led some commentators including Susan Greenfield and Sherry Turkle to make a series of dark pronouncements on the impact that social network sites might be having on our minds, brains and selves. One curiosity is that such changes are almost always uncritically represented as a source of worry.

Yet, from another perspective it might come as pleasant surprise to find that our brains can be rapidly restructured by what we do. And it makes a nice riposte to the new dismal scientists of evolutionary psychology, whose proponents like to claim that however much human beings have appeared to change throughout history we are still prisoners of our stone aged brains. The stream of finding about how our brains are plastic in the face of what we do – such as using technologies like Facebook – might be taken as a vindication of the counter claim that while much of our brain structure is built by Darwinian selection, human beings are immensely flexible and that this is in part is do with our brains’ ability to rapidly restructure to whatever tasks we face or with which we choose to engage.

This reception is, I believe, down to a couple of framing concepts: the idea of technological impact and a certain understanding of what mind to brain reduction means.

It is striking that a metaphor of impact is applied to almost every discussion of the interaction of the internet and our brains and minds. It is, however, a biased metaphor that represents technology as a potent and destructive force and human beings as puny individuals only able to cower in its shadow. The internet is arguably a technology that is like almost no other in history in that, with new mobile devices and new software applications offering new possibilities every day, it is open to individuals’ tailoring and customisation of the ways we choose to interact with it. Viewing it as something which simply impacts on us robs human beings of their role in being able to shape and appropriate the technology. To take Facebook as an example again, many people may find the frequent updates to the way the site appears disorientating but then again the ways people have customised the device to their use since its invention surely outstrip anything Mark Zuckerberg has dreamed of. Facebook is clearly a technology which was repurposed by its users.

The second concept is that we are somehow slaves to changes in our own brains. Indeed there is something ominous to many people about the idea that some activity or other changes the functioning topography or the relative sizes of our brain. It is as though something covert and beyond our control is going on here. Yet if you believe that ultimately the brain is the material basis of the mind then this should really come as no great shock. Learning a new skill, or adopting a new interest will undoubtedly cause brain rewiring, changes to the density of neural wiring and possibly entirely new brain circuits, but this does not mean we are the zombies of our technology. We still get to choose what we do; it´s just that our brains adapt to our choices.

The whole history of technology from the invention of the stone axe, to writing to the construction of the internet has been a history of human beings performing one experiment (conscious or not) with material culture and indirectly themselves. What is different today is that more of us get the chance to play a role in this experimentation. So let´s not portray us as the zombies of our technology, or foreclose the role we have in turning new technology to our needs and desires.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/11/01/facebooks-impact-on-the-brain/

Posted: 02-11-2011 12:25 Post subject:

Posted: 02-11-2011 12:27 Post subject:

But, can rhe brain suffer from a mental version of, Facebook related, Repetitive Strain Injury? confused

Posted: 08-09-2012 07:27 Post subject:

The internet is affecting language use - thou may'st find this of interest!

Tu and Twitter: Is it the end for 'vous' in French?
By Rebecca Lawn, Paris

The informal version of "you" in the French language - "tu" - seems to be taking over on social media, at the expense of the formal "vous". As in many countries, online modes of address in French are more relaxed than in face-to-face encounters. But will this have a permanent effect on the French language?

Anthony Besson calls most people "vous". As a young man, it is a sign of respect to those older than him, and he's often meeting new people through his work in PR in Paris.
Yet this all changes on social media. "I always use 'tu' on Twitter," Besson says. "And not just because it takes up fewer of the 140 characters!"

Lots of other French people do exactly the same.
"Tu" is normally for family and friends, but when you're communicating through @ symbols, joining networks and tweeting under a pseudonym, a formal "vous" can seem out of place, even to someone you've never met.

Antonio Casilli, professor of Digital Humanities at Telecom ParisTech engineering school, says the web has been used as a tool for breaking down social barriers from its very beginning, resulting in a distinctively "egalitarian political discourse".

The pervasive pattern of speech on the web in the 1990s, he says, was "cyber-utopian California-style libertarian discourse, inherited from 1960s counter-culture".
And the egalitarian spirit remained when the "participatory web" came of age in the mid-2000s, he suggests.

Social networking sites such as Twitter take this one step further, adopting codes "characterised by a heightened sense of emotional proximity", such as friending on Facebook, he says.

Twitter, meanwhile, follows on from a long line of internet forums where users could be anonymous.
"In the philosophy of the internet, we are among peers, equal, without social distinction, whatever your age, gender, income or status in real life," Besson says.
Addressing someone as "vous" - or expecting to be addressed as "vous" - on the other hand, implies hierarchy.

It is, as Casilli puts it, "a major break in the code of communication… an attempt to reaffirm asymmetric social roles… a manifestation of distance that compromises social cohesion".
Forget this at your peril.

Last year, Laurent Joffrin, director of left-leaning news magazine Nouvel Observateur, turned on a follower, asking who authorised him to use "tu" - "Qui vous autorise a me tutoyer?" (Joffrin, of course, used "vous".)

A storm erupted. Joffrin the accuser was himself accused of being rude and condescending.
"The fact that he was a public figure who was part of an elite probably didn't help as he expected some respect and viewed 'tu' as an insult," Besson says.

He likens knowledge of the online social codes to a form of cultural capital - you either have it or you don't. And while younger people may be more likely to have it, there is no guarantee.
"Just because you're young doesn't mean you're better at using the internet than your grandmother," Besson says.

A year later, Joffrin has stopped using Twitter - his last tweet was in October - though he says this is nothing to do with the "tu" drama.
"It was unpleasant," he says of that episode. "There's a group of people who think they are superior because they know a way of talking [on Twitter] that others don't. I don't like the hierarchy. They want to impose their codes.

"It doesn't bring people together, it heightens tensions. It's an appalling culture. People on Twitter would never dare to go up to someone in the street and call them 'tu' because it's a form of violence - you see drivers insulting each other using 'tu'.
"In big cities especially, you need respect and courtesy. And on Twitter, there isn't respect."

In Spain, the same thing is happening to modes of address online. The familiar "tu" dominates, with the formal "usted" a rarity.
As in France, the normal style of writing on Twitter in Spanish is "informal, direct and very personal", says Prof Jose Luis Orihuela of Navarra University, author of a book called Mundo Twitter (Twitter World).

Melchor Miralles Sangro, host of the Cada manana morning programme on ABC Punto Radio in Spain, who has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter says he usually uses "tu" online but is quite relaxed about forms of address. "I don't mind which form of 'you' people use to address me," he says. "I have no problem with either."

In Italian, meanwhile, the move towards "tu" was under way long before the arrival of the internet and social media. They merely reinforce an existing trend.
"In Italian, even among strangers or among people belonging to different generations, the informal 'tu' is much more frequent than the formal 'lei'," Casilli says.
"The shift in the use of informal language online is… less dramatic than in French."

It's too early to say whether Twitter will change how French people talk in everyday life.

etc..

-----------------------------------

In other languages

In German there's a tendency to use the informal "du" rather than the formal "Sie" on social media

In Russian the formal "vy" remains standard between strangers online
Language is liable to be even more formal than in face-to-face contact on the Japanese social networking site, Mixi

The informal "to" is more common than the formal "shoma" on social networks in Persian

The formal "nin" is rarely used in Chinese anyway but online language is often very informal and has generated a new lexicon of web slang

In the UK emails are now far more likely to begin with "Hi" than letters were in the era of snail mail

Posted: 21-01-2013 13:46 Post subject:

Web 're-defining' human identity says chief scientist
By Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent, BBC News

Social networks such as Facebook and on-line gaming are changing people's view of who they are and their place in the world, according to a report for the government's chief scientist.
The report, published by Prof Sir John Beddington, says that traditional ideas of identity will be less meaningful.

One consequence could be communities becoming less cohesive.
This change could be harnessed to bring positive changes or if ignored could fuel social exclusion, says the study.
"This can be a positive force, exemplified by the solidarity seen in the London 2012 Olympics or a destructive force, for example the 2011 riots," says the report.

"Due to the development of smart phones, social networks and the trend towards (greater) connectivity disparate groups can be more easily mobilised where their interests temporarily coincide."
"For example," it says, "a 'flash mob' can be mobilised between people who have not previously met".

The report, entitled "Future Identities," says that near continuous access to the internet, termed "hyper-connectivity", will drive profound changes to society over the next 10 years.

Prof Beddington commissioned the study as part of the Government Office for Science's Foresight programme - the influential Foresight reports look ahead to highlight emerging trends in science and technology with a view to informing policies across government departments.

"The most dynamic trend (in determining identity) is hyper-connectivity," Prof Beddington told BBC News.
"The collection and use of data by government and the private sector, the balancing of individual rights and liberties against privacy and security and the issue of how to tackle social exclusion, will be affected by these trends," he said. "I hope the evidence in today's report will contribute to the policy making process."

This latest report on identity undertook 20 separate reviews in which leading UK and international experts assessed research in computer science, criminology and social sciences.
It states that the changing nature of identities will have substantial implications for what is meant by communities and by social integration. The study shows that traditional elements that shape a person's identity, such as their religion, ethnicity, job and age are less important than they once were.
Instead, particularly among younger people, their view of themselves is shaped increasingly by on-line interactions of social networks and on online role playing games.

The study found that far from creating superficial or fantasy identities that some critics suggest, in many cases it allowed people to escape the preconceptions of those immediately around them and find their "true" identity. This is especially true of disabled people who told researchers that online gaming enabled them to socialise on an equal footing with others.
"The internet can allow many people to realise their identities more fully, " the authors write. "Some people who have been shy or lonely or feel less attractive discover they can socialise more successfully and express themselves more freely online".

The report points out that in 2011, 60% of internet users were members of a social network site, a huge surge in usage, up 43% from 2007. Consequently, it says that there may greater political activism using these networks as was seen in the revolution in Tunisia and the mobilisation of dissent in Egypt and Libya.

There will also be a blurring of work and social identities as photos and details of people's personal lives become increasingly public on social networking sites. The report cites a hypothetical example of how a young person was denied promotion because her employer found drunken photos of her from her university days. Embarassed

The report says that as the distinction between online and real world identities diminishes criminals are likely to try and exploit the many new forms of interlinked data relating people's identities and from social media and professional and financial websites in order to steal identities.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21084945

Posted: 07-04-2013 10:34 Post subject:

'Facebook Home could change our brains'
Leading neuroscientist Susan Greenfield says Facebook's new phone and app encourage us to live in the moment. That could change our brains, she claims.
By Susan Greenfield
7:00AM BST 06 Apr 2013

Facebook is going to be in your face even more than before. The arrival of the ‘Facebook Phone’ and the eventual availability of the latest it has to offer on all Android platforms, means the current obsession with monitoring the lives of others and recording every moment of your own existence, will be made even easier, a default adjunct to daily life. Whilst the ethics and risk of the possible collation of the ensuing Tsunami of personal information now flooding into the central Facebook databases might raise obvious concerns, as a neuroscientist I’m most worried by what this latest ‘advance’ will mean to us as individuals.

Humans occupy more ecological niches than any other species on the planet because of the superlative ability of our brains, compared with those of any other animal, to adapt to the environment: a process known as ‘plasticity’. So if the human brain will adapt to whatever environment in which it is placed, an environment where you are constantly on the alert to the actions and views of others, will surely be changing your mindset in correspondingly new ways. How will the 21st Century human brain, with its clear evolutionary mandate, react to this latest development in what has been dubbed ‘The Digital Wildfire’?

Already privacy appears to be a less prized commodity among the younger generation of ‘Digital Natives’: apparently 55 per cent of teenagers have given out personal information to someone they don’t know, including photos and physical descriptions. Meanwhile over half send out group messages to typically over 500 ‘friends’ at a time, fully aware that each of these friends could then pass on that information to their network of further hundreds... It has become more important to have attention, to be ‘famous’. The trade-off for such disclosure and indeed fame is, and always has been, loss of privacy. So why have we previously treasured privacy so much, but now are holding it in increasing disregard?

Perhaps because until now, privacy has been the other side of the coin to our identity. We have seen ourselves as individual entities, in contact with the outside world for sure, but at the same time always distinct from it. We have interacted with that outside world, but only in the way and at the times we have chosen. You have secrets, memories and hopes to which no one else has automatic access; a private life, distinct from a professional one, as well as a multifaceted one of individual friendships where we vary what and how much we confide in someone else. Above all you have an inner narrative, an ongoing thought process that is yours alone: until now.

Another new feature of ‘Facebook Home’ will be ‘Chat Heads’, which means that when anyone contacts you on your mobile, a little ‘bubble’ featuring a picture of that person will appear with the text. These illustrated ‘bubbles’ will appear on the mobile screen, no matter what you are currently doing on your phone, allowing constant maintained ‘illustrated’ contact. But if you’re anchored increasingly in the present, consequently constantly catering for and to the demands of the outside world, that inner narrative might be now even harder to sustain. The mind might remain more child-like, reactive and dependent on the behavior and thoughts of others.

Already we are seeing a generation of 20-somethings still living at home, wearing ‘onesies’ (all in one crawler suits usually reserved for very small infants), perhaps playing mythical or sci-fi games with simplified values of all-good or all-evil, and/or craving the constant attention of others through social networking sites. The ‘you’ externally constructed by Facebook, accentuated further by the latest operating system, may not allow much time and opportunity for internal memories to mature, nor private reflections to develop into a fully-fledged, individual mind. But if you now define yourself externally by the instant thumbs-up from others, then abolition of privacy is to be welcomed in order to belong, and for a new type of identity to flourish – one that is hyper-connected and collective.

Perhaps it will mean living a life where the thrill of reporting and the receiving completely trumps the ongoing experience itself. Your identity now is paradoxically online moment-to-moment but essentially offline in how you register it. The momentary excitements you’re feeling are generated not by raw, first-hand life itself, but by the slightly delayed, indirect experience of the continuing reaction and approval of everyone else.

If we’re going to be living in a world where face-to-face interaction, unpractised as it is, becomes uncomfortable, then such an aversion to real life, three-dimensional communication combined with a more collective identity, may be changing the very nature of personal relationships themselves. The speed required for reaction and the reduced time for reflection might mean that those reactions and evaluations themselves are becoming increasingly superficial.

It is important to bear in mind that the interaction between the brain and the environment is a two-way dialogue: just as important as how we view and use the latest technology, is the impact that an environment dominated by wizardry such as ‘Facebook Home’ will have on shaping our minds – and hence most significantly, on how we view ourselves.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9975118/Facebook-Home-could-change-our-brains.html

Posted: 09-04-2013 01:11 Post subject:

Seems the best place for this one. Sad

NSFW as this site directly quotes some of the offending twots.

Posted: 09-04-2013 18:39 Post subject:

Delightful!

What else were they expecting?

she should join an NGO where such behaviour is tolerated.

Posted: 10-04-2013 18:38 Post subject:

There shall be no cupboard left unopened in the search for public figures' skeletons, and the paper trail online just makes it easier.

Occasionally, I like to share information with some younger work colleagues I think may interest them. Recently, I've pretty much stopped bothering as some can't make their way through a full article or give up 10 seconds into a youtube clip. Which led me to thinking just how much information the youth of today are taking in and even if it is relevant information, are they retaining it or cross-pollinating it with other titbits? So I started looking at the link between social media and short attention spans and found there's a fair bit out there but this is probably the easiest presentation of the idea....

http://www.geekosystem.com/social-media-ruins-minds-infographic/

Of course the outcome of this is that the FT only has a few years left as a periodical and features in the digital version should be kept to around 140 characters...but only for weighty subjects.

Posted: 05-10-2013 11:50 Post subject:

Fixed thread title. P_M

I don't use social media like Facebook or Twitter. Just discussing this with my spouse, in fact. Too much temptation to indulge in constant, unnecessary, trivial self-advertisement. Reducing one's entire life to an advertising hoarding.

I've discovered that I need to get on my bike and cycle for a few kilometres to the nearest decent pub, just so I can give my full concentration to a beer and a good book. In fact, it's how I find the space and time to give my full attention to reading the FT. Worth the effort.

Posted: 05-10-2013 11:52 Post subject:

Posted: 05-10-2013 12:03 Post subject:

No problem. I just like tidy thread titles. Possibly too much.

Posted: 05-10-2013 12:04 Post subject:

The reduced attention span of those brought up since computers became user-friendly seems hard to deny. A minority of youngsters do any reading for pleasure and even bright A Level candidates seem incapable of planning a cogent essay.

Some say they have compensating strengths but all I see is knowledge reduced to a necessary evil on the path to money. The impact of technology in the last fifteen years has been very destructive within brains, between brains and governing brains.

The most sinister development has been the reliance on Google as an oracle. I think I have never seen a young person - unprompted - get past page one of the results! In their results-led world, answers are sought but they have little ability to evaluate them and seem at the mercy of authorities in every sense.

It amounts to the destruction of confidence. For that you need to actively seek out and filter information using libraries, indices, comparisons and clock up hours of peripheral and accidental reading. It used to be called General Knowledge but there was nothing vague about it. It is fading so fast that I fear it will be a term unknown to the next generation. Sad

I'm sure this thread already exists and I have probably already contributed a horribly similar lament . . . Spiny

Posted: 05-10-2013 12:11 Post subject:

I was noticing the inability to grapple with sizable presentations (texts, etc.) among younger friends and colleagues long before the rise of current social media time sinks. I'm referring here to a timeframe extending back some 30 years.

Another contributing factor is the increasing reliance on mobile devices as one's primary 'Net console, and the obvious display limitations and resulting need to interact with the device repeatedly to survey larger materials. This aspect is related to the increasing speed / immediacy / volume of all the media content bombarding people who just have to remain 'connected' throughout the day.

On some forums where I've served as moderator I've noticed a progressive increase in the number of newcomers who seem to think they should get 'drive-through' service - e.g., posting a question and getting a quick answer without searching for what's already there for the taking.

To make things worse, I've also noticed what seems to be a decline in comprehension and analytical skills. In other words, even if the younger colleague can be bothered to wade through an entire paper / article, he / she seems unduly challenged to make sense of it or to compare its content with other stuff (including personal knowledge).

My overall impression is a progressive increase in the amount of substantive 'information' available but a progressive decrease in the ability to locate, survey, and make sense of it.