A load of rubbish

The Guardian today reported that Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, yesterday told the House of Lords that social networks like Facebook risk “infantalising” the minds of the next generation of adults, creating a generation who can’t interact with people in the real world, who become obsessed with flashing screens and anonimity.

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….

…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…

…[we are] enthusiastically embracing [the possible erosion of our identity through social networking sites]. [these site errode where the virtual world] finishes and the outside world begins…perhaps the next generation will define themselves by the responses of others…[social networks provide] constant reassurance – that you are listened to, recognised, and important…[real world conversations are being avoided and are] 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 fears] 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sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf.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.

First of all, Greenfield appears to confuse several issues in her attack, between social networks and computer games. Whilst it is probably true that being shut away in a room constantly engaged in any single, solitary activity with little interaction with other people will result in a socially stunted individual, this is not what social networks are for. The clue is in the name – they are social. They are there for social interaction, the polar opposite of Greenfield’s attack.

So to Greenfield’s fears that social networks will actually make people interact differently and leave them unable to operate “real world” relationships. I think this is rubbish as well. Primarily, social networks strengthen real-world relationships. People use social networks to augment their existing friendships. To keep in touch with people they may normally lose contact with, or to rekindle old friendships. These friendships are based in the “real world” so they miss this anonymity.

Sometimes conversations are easier online. You can take three days to think up that witty response. But if it makes your friends laugh, is that so bad? Also, because you still have day-to-day contact with people, then you maintain these skills.

Secondarily, social networks are used to form new relationships and links. Anonymity can be a problem here, but I think Greenfield really underestimates the medium. There are places where people may exagerate their personality, or invent a completely new one. But these tend to operate in spaces where anonymity/fantasy are the rules of the game. People accept this and they work within these parameters. This isn’t so different from offline role play, make believe, amature dramatics. Crucially, I would say that these fantasy interactions take place in spaces where fantasy is the norm - it is a different world.

Your carefully crafted facebook profile saying your a spy with an Austin Martin and a taste for martinis is soon going to be blown when that person from work asks to be your friend.