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Posted: 11-02-2010 10:38 Post subject: Internet 'rewiring brains'

Students brains 'rewired' by the internet
British students are unable to concentrate on reading an academic book for study, because the internet is '"rewiring" their brains, a new documentary claims.
Published: 7:30AM GMT 11 Feb 2010

Experts say the internet encourages users to dart between pages instead of concentrating on one source such as a book, the traditional staple of student research.

This new 'associative' thinking leaves the majority incapable of 'linear' disciplines like reading and writing at length because their minds have been remoulded to function differently.

And within three years, hundreds of thousands of British teenagers will require medication or hospital treatment for mental illnesses caused by excessive web use, psychologists warn.

The claims will be made on the final episode of BBC2's The Virtual Revolution on Saturday, February 20.

The programme teamed up with Professor David Nicholas, of the University College of London, to launch a groundbreaking study into the web's impact on our brains.

Initial findings from 100 volunteers who were asked a series of questions on a computer found that most 12 to 18-year-olds gave their answers after looking at half the number of web pages and only one-sixth of the time viewing the information than their elders.

It follows recent research published by Prof Nicholas, who was the first academic to systematically study people's online behaviour by analysing millions of anonymous data records, which suggested the web's hyperlinked network of information was rewiring youngsters' minds.

He found that four in 10 people never revisited the same web page and that they viewed only up to three pages from the thousands available online.

In contrast, people who grew up before the age of the internet repeatedly return to the same source instead of flitting between sites.

Prof Nicholas said: ''The really big surprise was that people seemed to be skipping over the virtual landscape.

''They were hopping from sites, looking at one or two pages, going to another site, looking at one or two pages and then going on. Nobody seemed to be staying anywhere for very long.''

.....

Dr David Runciman, political scientist at Cambridge University, told the programme: ''What I notice about students from the first day they arrive at university is that they ask nervously, 'What do we have to read?'

''When they are told the first thing they have to read is a book, they all now groan, which they didn't use to do five or 10 years ago.

''You say, 'Why are you groaning?' and they say, 'It's a book. How long is it?'

''Books are still at the heart of what it means to be educated and to try to educate. The generation of students I teach see books as peripheral.''

Leading neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield, a professor at Oxford University, told the documentary that the web and social networking sites were 'infantilising'' children's minds and detaching them from reality.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7205852/Students-brains-rewired-by-the-internet.html

Posted: 11-02-2010 14:28 Post subject:

Bulls*t.
All of it.

Posted: 11-02-2010 19:53 Post subject:

Posted: 11-02-2010 19:56 Post subject:

I was a student not very long ago and I'm very much of the generation who grew up with the internet. And I do wonder what it has done to my mind. Also, I'm an avid reader (in my better moments) but when I've been using computers very heavily, I find it difficult to concentrate on a book.

Posted: 11-02-2010 20:04 Post subject:

Posted: 11-02-2010 20:22 Post subject:

Well, quite. I don't watch have a TV but the computer's certainly my worst enemy on sleepless nights.

I am definitely interested in the effect the internet has had on youth culture, what with how it's opened entirely new and often very abstract channels of communication.

I don't know if the internet rewires brains in any physical way, but I think the entire paradigm of thinking must be rather different from in previous generations. Instant worldwide communication, anonymity, new jokes...

Posted: 11-02-2010 22:44 Post subject:

Assuming your brevity doesn't indicate irony Theyithian, could you expand on your thinking? I find this a fascinating subject. I once had this debate with someone who maintained that the same argument crops up whenever a new media becomes widespread eg. cinema, TV, etc. That they rot the minds of the young & so on...
Maybe I'm a bit of an old reactionary or just a snob but I think our current obsessions with celebrity & reality shows may be one of the results of the pervasiveness of cinema, TV, even the print media in our lives. Of course one can always say 'If it's rubbish, then don't engage with it', but that seems like an 'I'm alright Jack', position that means ignoring something that may be having a bad effect on others.

Anyhoo, that's the limit of my attention span Laughing

Posted: 11-02-2010 22:47 Post subject:

I think it's tosh, really.
The Internet has enabled non-linear methods of information access, which enables people to acquire knowledge more efficiently than ploughing through books.
Teenagers have just grown up with it, that's all.
Heck, I use the Internet more than most teenagers, and I don't think it's changed my ability to read or concentrate.
I think this is just some educational scientists looking for something to talk about (so they can get grant money).

Posted: 11-02-2010 23:38 Post subject:

Posted: 12-02-2010 00:50 Post subject:

An amusing case of 'Why did I read all those books when I could've Wikied it'?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jmGhi_kSNkdQjRa8ZdBAewyrxFYwD9DPB5B81

The internet's great but it's 'unrestrictedness', can be both good & bad? It strikes me that people who criticise the internet are getting dismissed when they're simply pointing out that it can have downsides.

Learning new things makes for new synaptic connections in the brain? Does learning (experiencing) things in a new, imo shallower, way lead to a 'Rewiring' of the brain that is different from previous generations? & is it worse, better or just different?

Posted: 12-02-2010 13:50 Post subject:

I just don't buy this.

I don't see any evidence that brains are actually being 'rewired' in any way. How did they test this? maybe I missed something because I was just scanning the article online Smile

Most of the students I have ever taught would much rather print off a PDF or photocopy literature than read it off a monitor and are pretty good at finding out information from books and journals.

As for groaning when they're asked to read a book, well students moan when you ask them to do anything that involves a bit of effort don't they?

Posted: 13-02-2010 01:23 Post subject:

Posted: 13-02-2010 01:40 Post subject:

I don't think anybody's suggesting that the change in human intellect is going to happen overnight or even over a couple of years. But in 200 years time will people look back & say that the technological shift benefited us all? Or was it another driving of the wedge between haves & have-nots, controllers & controlled?

Posted: 13-02-2010 02:02 Post subject:

Posted: 13-02-2010 03:34 Post subject: