Facebook May 'Infantilize' Your Mind, Expert Warns

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 24, 2009 3:28 PM CST
Facebook May 'Infantilize' Your Mind, Expert Warns
A Facebook page.   (AP Photo)

A British neuroscientist thinks the children of today, exposed to “instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key,” will develop differently from past generations, and that’s not a good thing. Facebook, for instance provides an experience “devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance,” Lady Greenfield tells the Guardian. “The mid-21st-century mind might almost be infantilized.”

“It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations,” Greenfield said, referring to the abundant time youngsters spend in front of screens. She even thinks the anonymity of online interaction could result in “a shaky sense of identity.” Greenfield also wonders whether an increase in prescriptions for ADD could be linked to social-networking. (More Britain stories.)

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