Does Twitter make our brains go mushy?

With the catchy title „The Twitter Trap“, he fueled debate with his recent article. While he accepts that the Web reaches and engages a vast, global audience, that it invites participation and facilitates — up to a point — newsgathering, he alerts us to not jump into digital idolatry but rather to consider that innovation often comes at a price: until the 15th century, people were taught to remember vast quantities of information. Then along came the Mark Zuckerberg of his day, Johannes Gutenberg. As we became accustomed to relying on the printed page, the work of remembering gradually fell into disuse. The capacity to remember prodigiously still exists, but for most of us it stays parked in the garage.

 

In opposition to that, Christian Stöcker (Spiegel Online) argues that the demonization of tools, not despite but because of their usefulness, is one of the more ludicrous phony arguments driving the recent debate over the Internet and digitization.

 

Undoubtedly, from the pocket calculator that diminished math skills  to G.P.S. which is undermining our mastery of city streets and perhaps even impaired our innate sense of direction, this is the story of the next half-century, as we become effectively cyborgs.

 

 

In his objection titled "Reading Can Also Make You Dumb", Christian Stöcker takes the position that lamenting about our lost cognitive skills and abilities is absurd. Nowadays, very few people can till a field with an ox, a harrow and a plow. This suggests that the decline of mankind must have begun with the invention of steam-driven farm machinery, if not with the use of draught horses. He believes, that criticizing technical progress on the basis of the ways in which it makes our lives easier is both absurd and reactionary. Still, because of the speed of the digital revolution – the speed at which digital technology is currently changing the world, this is getting steam again.

 

Contrarily,  bad sport Bill reckons that we are outsourcing our brains to the cloud. The upside is that this frees a lot of gray matter for important pursuits like FarmVille and “Real Housewives.,” he jokes ironically. But seriously: are the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy? The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions – it demands attention and response, it is the enemy of contemplation.

 

As an experiment, Bill Keller tweeted “#TwitterMakesYouStupid. Discuss.” To him the result was clear: In an actual discussion, the marshaling of information is cumulative, complication is acknowledged, sometimes persuasion occurs. In a Twitter discussion, opinions and our tolerance for others’ opinions are stunted. Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.

 

Responding to "#TwitterMakesYouStupid", Journalism Professor Jeff Jarvis tweeted: "Depends who you follow." and "Bill. The NYT no longer tells us what to discuss. Twitter does. ;-)"  Christian Stöcker finds that the mere fact that the New York Times diagnoses a possibly soul-destroying effect of social media suggests a lot of bottled-up angst about the present. He states that many studies in the United States and in Germany have shown that for the most part social networks do in fact reflect the real social environments of their young users. This does not apply to the same degree to 62-year-old newspaper executive editors. People over 50 have a critical disadvantage compared with those under 40 (roughly speaking) when it comes to the communicative Internet: Most of them got to know it as a joyless work tool, writing their first e-mails to coworkers or their boss, and not to a girl they were secretly in love with. They have Facebook accounts because they feel that they should, not because it's a venue for their friends to communicate with one another. And they do communicate, via Twitter, for example, with total strangers. It isn't terribly surprising that this sort of communication produces conversations that some would characterize as "flat," "not social" or "trivial."

 

Looking at the pros and cons, how do you feel about it? Has Twitter really altered the way of thinking, socializing and communicating? And in what direction? Are we, as Wolitzer describes it, the generation that had information, but no context; butter, but no bread; craving, but no longing? What do you think? Is Twitter making us dumb, does it shallow our communication and massacre our attention span? Or has this lack of quality conversations probably more to do with work loads and adaptation problems - integration difficulties of digital aliens?

„The Twitter Trap“ by Bill Keller, New York Times

"Reading Can Also Make You Dumb" by Christian Stöcker, Spiegel Online

For further information read the related DLDdebate article "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr