Scientists say Twitter damages emotional developement

[X-Punisher]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/mentalhealth/04/14/twitter.study/index.html

(CNN) -- Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or getting updates via social-networking tools such as Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say.

New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain's "moral compass" to process and could harm young people's emotional development.

Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin or the latest Twitter update, according to a University of Southern California study.

"If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality," said researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

The report, published next week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, studied how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain. iReport.com: Growing pains for Twitter, Facebook?

Brain scans showed humans can process and respond very quickly to signs of physical pain in others, but took longer to show admiration of compassion.

"For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people's social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and refection," said Immordio-Yang.

She said the study raises questions about the emotional cost, particularly for young people, of heavy reliance on a torrent of news snippets delivered via TV and online feeds such as Twitter.

She said: "We need to understand how social experience shapes interactions between the body and mind, to produce citizens with a strong moral compass."

USC sociologist Manuel Castells said the study raised more concerns over fast-moving TV than the online environment.

"In a media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in."

Research leader Antonio Damasio, director of USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, said the findings stressed the need for slower delivery of the news, and highlighted the importance of slow-burn emotions like admiration.

Damasio cited the example of U.S. President Barack Obama, who says he was inspired by his father, to show how admiration can be key to cultural success.

"We actually separate the good from the bad in great part thanks to the feeling of admiration. It's a deep physiological reaction that's very important to define our humanity."

Twitter, which allows users to swap messages and links of 140-characters or less, says on its Web site that it sees itself as a solution to information overload, rather than a cause of it.

This function, it says, "means you can step in and out of the flow of information as it suits you and it never queues up with increasing demand of your attention."

 

[StorminNorman]

I think irrelevant studies damage emotional development.

 

[Ghostvirus]

How is it possible to come up with results on a stufy like this without doing years worth of research observing someone who communicates via text, e-mail, twitter, etc...?

 

[The Battousai]

This is clearly not a conclusion of a study, but a release of a TREND that is being noticed by people performing these studies.

It's dishonest to say that the article is proposing that this is DEFINITIVE information.

 

[spideyboy_1111]

i will say this... the internet is indeed a double-edged sword. I've noticed even with myself, the more you talk online, the more comfortable you get with it, and the more difficult it can be to socialize at times in the "real world"

 

[Majic Walrus]

I have noticed that I can't communicate effectively if I attempt to use more than one hundred and forty characters. It just seems like as soon as I get to that

 

[Franklin Richards]

Did Gupta write this?

 

[The Professor]

I think irrelevant studies damage emotional development.

 

[Sawyer]

Twitter's ****in' ******ed anyway....

 

[Jack O Lantern]

Hmmmmm...

I do notice that on the internet people will say things they would never say in real life. I don't just mean internet hardmen, but also jokes about race, rape and death. I don't know anybody who spends a lot of time on the net posting but I would imagine that if you do spend time in that kind of enviroment it could become your nature

 

[SsM]

I think irrelevant studies damage emotional development.

The fact that people are funding studies like these are ludicrous..

 

[[A]]

funny, I thought you had to have a damaged emotional developement to use twitter (and myspace and facebook and all that)

 

[Spidey-Bat]

Twitter's ****in' ******ed anyway....

Agreed.

 

[Ronny Shade]

I've found that facebook makes me relate to people much more.

 

[thejon93]

Evil, evil internet...

 

[Immortalfire]

A new study shows that you can get money to study anything.

 

[SsM]

A new study shows that you can get money to study anything.

Aint that the truth >_<

 

[xwolverine2]

if these scientist were really that smart.... they wouldnt care about this lol