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sábado, 24 de marzo de 2012
Are you in facebook?
Do you know the famous Facebook? Read this interesting article about
it and make your own reflections.
Noticia Completa
Facebook and Bebo
risk 'infantilising' the human mind
Greenfield warns
Social
networking sites, such as Facebook, are putting attention span in jeopardy, says
Baroness Greenfield. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty
Images
Social
network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it
characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise
and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading
neuroscientist.
The
startling warning from Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at
Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, has led members
of the government to admit their work on internet regulation has not extended to
broader issues, such as the psychological impact on
children.
Greenfield believes ministers have not yet looked at the broad cultural
and psychological effect of on-screen friendships via Facebook,
Bebo and Twitter.
She
told the House of Lords that children's experiences on social networking sites
"are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence,
the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short
attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of
identity".
Arguing
that social network sites are putting attention span in jeopardy, she said: "If
the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and
reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such
rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales.
Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming,
we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit
disorder.
"It
might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture
in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the
threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the
drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder."
She
also warned against "a much more marked preference for the here-and-now, where
the immediacy of an experience trumps any regard for the consequences. After
all, whenever you play a computer game, you can always just play it again;
everything you do is reversible. The emphasis is on the thrill of the moment,
the buzz of rescuing the princess in the game. No care is given for the princess
herself, for the content or for any long-term significance, because there is
none. This type of activity, a disregard for consequence, can be compared with
the thrill of compulsive gambling or compulsive
eating.
"The
sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to
similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug
addiction. So we should not underestimate the 'pleasure' of interacting with a
screen when we puzzle over why it seems so appealing to young
people."
Greenfield also warned there was a risk of loss of empathy as children
read novels less. "Unlike the game to rescue the princess, where the goal is to
feel rewarded, the aim of reading a book is, after all, to find out more about
the princess herself."
She
said she found it strange we are "enthusiastically embracing" the possible
erosion of our identity through social networking sites, since those that use
such sites can lose a sense of where they themselves "finish and the outside
world begins".
She
claimed that sense of identity can be eroded by "fast-paced, instant screen
reactions, perhaps the next generation will define themselves by the responses
of others".
Social
networking sites can provide a "constant reassurance – that you are listened to,
recognised, and important". Greenfield continued. This was coupled with a
distancing from the stress of face-to-face, real-life conversation, which were
"far more perilous … occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever
or witty responses" and "require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and
perhaps even to pheromones, those sneaky molecules that we release and which
others smell subconsciously".
She
said she feared "real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these
sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning
and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages
of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with
similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal
involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time
interaction."
The
solutions, however, lay less in regulation as in education, culture and
society.
Greenfield argued that the appeal of Facebook lay in the fact that "a
child confined to the home every evening may find at the keyboard the kind of
freedom of interaction and communication that earlier generations took for
granted in the three-dimensional world of the street. But even given a choice,
screen life can still be more appealing."
She
quoted one user saying they had 900 friends, another saying the fact "that you
can't see or hear other people makes it easier to reveal yourself in a way that
you might not be comfortable with. You become less conscious of the individuals
involved [including yourself], less inhibited, less embarrassed and less
concerned about how you will be evaluated."
But
Greenfield warned: "It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will
not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous
generations. We know that the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the
outside world."
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