Can you imagine a world without long-term relationships, where people are unable to understand the consequences of their actions or empathise with one another?
Such conditions would not only hamper our happiness and prosperity – they could threaten our very survival.
Yet this imagined existence isn’t as far away as it seems. It is a plausible future. For we are developing an ever deeper dependence on websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Second Life – and these technologies can alter the way our minds work.
We must take this issue of computers seriously because what could be more important than the brains of the next generation?
As a neuroscientist, I am aware of how susceptible our brains are to change – and our environment has changed drastically over the past decade. Most people spend at least two hours each day in front of a computer, and living this way will result in minds very different from those of past generations.
Our brains are changing in unprecedented ways. We know the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the outside world – this so-called ‘plasticity’ is famously illustrated by London taxi drivers who need to remember all the streets of the city, and whose part of the brain related to memory is generally bigger than in the rest of us as a result.
Indeed, one of the most exciting concepts in neuroscience is that all experience leaves its mark on your brain.
But while adults’ brains can change, it is children who are most at risk, for their brains are still growing – and may not have yet had a full range of experiences in three dimensions.
Yet 99 per cent of children and young people use the internet, according to an Ofcom study. In 2005, the average time children spent online was 7.1 hours per week. By 2007, it had almost doubled to 13.8 hours.
Of course, this idea may not be welcomed – when someone first linked smoking and lung cancer, people didn’t like that idea; some derided them because they enjoyed smoking. But parallels could well be drawn with this, and believe similar precautionary thinking should be set in train, as in turn was needed for sunbathing and carbon emissions.
We must take this issue of computers seriously because what could be more important than the brains of the next generation?
Three areas of computing are likely to have the most marked effect – social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, imagined online societies such as Second Life, and computer games. By Baroness Susan Greenfield
Under-13 ‘Baby Facebook’ worries parenting experts
The announcement that Facebook is considering changing its policy so that children younger than 13 would be allowed to use the site, with parental permission, has at least two parenting experts questioning the value of such an effort.
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