Op-Ed: Twitter and become an idiot?

Recent findings have established that people who tweet and text a lot sometimes get lower IQ scores. That’s opened a pretty natural debate about both the whole idea of fast feed media and the sort of science that analyzes it.

At the British Science Festival Dr. Tracy Alloway, who’s a cognitive psychologist and director of the Centre for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, in Scotland made some interesting statements: 1. Working memory and the ability to recall information is more important to success and happiness than IQ. 2. Twitter, which produces a stream of information which requires very little processing, means the brain isn’t as engaged, hence doesn’t improve nerve connections. 3. The use of non memory related technology like speed dial meant that active memory is being less used. OK, let’s look at Twitter. It’s a stream of info, all right, and it’s hyperactive. Distractions abound. Like the TV argument, the brain pans from one picture to another rapidly. The attention span isn’t just shortened, it’s severed. You don't have a lot of choice in what you can do with the available information. But- Try this set of information: The. Quick. Brown. Fox jumped over…. Like it or not, the brain is getting “stop” messages from the period marks and lines. The method dictates the behavior. Now, try this mix: The. Squirrel hijacks Nova Scotia. Quick. Squirrel returns Nova Scotia. Brown. Squirrel demands compensation. Fox jumped over…. Canada declares war on squirrel. Lazy dog arrested for dereliction of duty and loitering in typing exercise. Canada cedes national acorn rights to squirrel. How’s your brain? Still there, or reminding itself yet again that it should move to another planet? The “punctuation” process of the attention span is the key. This quote from The Sydney Morning Herald link above explains the neurology:

Experts in brain plasticity have warned for years of the potential detrimental effects of fast-motion electronics and behaviours on brain development and function.

''Any technology that we use rewires our brains - pencil and paper rewire our brains,'' says Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself. ''The problem with electronic technologies,'' he warns, ''is that they're extremely compatible with the brain because the brain uses them as prosthetic extensions very easily and takes on the characteristics of those technologies.''

People hardwire their behavior. It’s learning by doing. Call it the equivalent of active memory for neural physiology. Observation is a primary survival skill, and anything which involves the optic nerves gets a lot of priority in behavioral hardwiring. This is not intended as sophistry, but an argument: What if we didn’t respond like this to technology? Could it be that not being able to interact and learn fast with modern technical functions might have a downside? A person who stuck to their hardwiring of 20 years ago would be lost. Something like a cell phone imposes so many new behaviors and processes that it’s fair to say that procedural logic alone involves extra memory and hardwiring. Twitter isn’t about memory, it’s about accessing information. I read an average of about 3-4 newspapers online a day. I can skim through, reading Twitter-like headlines, because I know the information base. I have retained the story lines of news issues. So I’m not an amnesiac, I’m using the information differently, and I promise you I don’t have time to read my way through The Sydney Morning Herald, The New York Times, BBC, etc, every day. Twitter is essentially a listing process, with highly variable elements. Lists are supposed to summarize, to reduce text, and to provide access to simple memory functions, rather than produce an encyclopedia. It’s an efficiency tradeoff. You may not get all the information, but you can manage your time usage better, with access and selective usage. Dr. Alloway does have one major point in her favor, however. People do what they’re trained to do, and behavior is a form of training. The tendency to shorten attention span can create a spasm effect. For kids, who are in the process of doing their major hardwiring along with their growth, this spasmodic use of memory may well have real neurological ramifications. In modern marketing, the Theory of Non Existent Attention Spans goes to extremes. The tendency is to less content, based on the theory that people use X amount of time looking at any particular thing. The average attention span is supposed to be Y seconds, or Z amount of text. Which is why we have a planet full of PhDs and double degrees, because nobody thinks for more than Y seconds, or reads Z amount of text. It’s why books are getting bigger, and why people buy more repacks of old media than new. The theory hasn’t taken into account base memory. Stimuli create memories and behaviors, too. You can see how well the extreme version of the theory of brief attention spans survives scrutiny. That’s also not the basis of the criticism of the fast feed media, which is based on observation over a relatively short period of time. The problem is that nobody’s really had the time to go into memory functions and do some big surveys and get enough hard facts. To turn this argument into something functional, a lot more information, verified, measurable and confirmed, is required. This won’t be the last you hear of technology vs. the brain, but the logic in the arguments needs some behavioral hardwiring too.