I am very skeptical of the article's claims. Greenfield basically makes a bunch of assertions without citing any studies, and its implied that we should believe/consider them simply because she's a neuroscientist.
Googling her was insightful. Apparently her specialty is brain physiology but she's well known in England for contributing to the public's understanding of science. That's legit and all, but it probably makes her prone to being self-aggrandizing, and
this article seems to support that.
When I skim over
the work she's published in academia, none of it has to do with the effects of contemporary technology on the brain, so I don't see how she has any support for what she's saying. She has published a book on the subject for the public, however, and it's received negative reviews
on Amazon.
But on to the issues raised by the article.
First of all, I don't quite see the point of such extreme alarmism, besides finding an easy audience. All this doom and gloom and she doesn't even try to propose any solution!
And that's the thing: there isn't one. This transition to new ways of organizing/distributing information is inevitable and permanent, kinda like the transition to literacy years ago. There's going to be a trade-off, and it's going to be the new reality.
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.
That's the thing though - the internet is now part of the real world. It's not separate from the reality of human existence, nor will it become the totality of it. It's not going to cripple our ability to navigate the material world because we're not going to stop living in it.
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.
Yeah, well, baseless speculating about this link without doing any studies might be helpful in building up hype for yourself.
...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...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
Welp. This is a grossly inaccurate characterization of video games. In discounting their capability to tell stories with a higher degree of interactivity than ever before, she basically just reveals how little she knows about the subject. Also apparently nobody told her you are indeed allowed to reread books and rewatch films too
Her whole thing on identity is also pretty dumb and not really worth discussing. Basically facebook will lead to ego-loss, so...social networking = psychedelics??
Finally, her conclusion:
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.
'Change in life will result in changed minds.' And this is bad...why?
We know that the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the outside world.
Yes. But this points to the brain's remarkable ability to
adapt rather than a delicate fragility.
My personal thoughts? I agree with something I've read somewhere I can't remember (man I've got such great authority) which is basically that: the internet is cool when it adds to our social interaction but it's harmful if it replaces it.
