Twitter Makes You Evil?
These days, you can’t swing a Fendi without hitting someone who’s tweeting from their phone. At 10 million users worldwide, Twitterville today is a lot different than it was two years ago when I had just gotten started on the micro-blogging platform. The large influx of users has inspired a host of surveys about the effects of using this and other social media tools.
Scientists from the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) released findings recently that essentially say Twitter adversely affects our moral compass. The high-speed surge of information we experience on platforms like Twitter has been linked to damaging effects on our ability to develop emotionally.
While the human brain can respond in seconds to signs of physical pain in others but it takes longer to engage the emotions like admiration and compassion, which are critical for developing a sense of morality. This lack of time to reflect, says USC scientists, makes heavy users of social networks more likely to become “indifferent to human suffering.”
“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 reflection.” says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang of the USC Rossier School of Education. “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.”
Immordino-Yang is not shaking a fist at social networks.
“It’s not about what tools you have, it’s about how you use those tools,” she said.
No examples of how we’re supposed to use these tools to not become inhuman monsters has been provided. Further, the study only used a sample of 13 users and its results have not yet been replicated.
What do you think? Is the speed of our interactions taking a toll on our ability to tell right from wrong and engage our sense of justice and morality?
Of Possible Interest:
Is Twitter Evil? by Alan Boyle for MSNBC’s Cosmic Log
The Neuroscience of Admiration by Jonah Lehrer, editor-at-large of Seed Magazine (via @ABartelby)
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April 15th, 2009 at 10:28 am
While I don’t pretend at all to be a neurological specialist, I do find this to be a fascinating topic (obviously), and am putting the actual study on my must-read list immediately.
Personally, although I will freely admit that I have seen Twitter’s affects on my own and others’ online interactions and ability to process information, I cannot so quickly claim that those affects are necessarily morally bankrupting. I.e., yes, I think Twitter (as does all online interaction, though, really; no need to single out Twitter for this) does sometimes have an adverse affect on our moral reasoning abilities. But I also think that our brains have an infinite talent of adapting to this stimulus and behaving in accordance with our already pre-established moral compasses. Just, you know, more quickly, at the speed of the internets. And sometimes in under 140 characters.
Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex published a piece on this press release and study just this morning, as well, actually. Although “The Neuroscience Of Admiration” does not come any closer to advancing any theories regarding Twitter and our morality, it is nevertheless an interesting perspective on the study you cited.
OMG, Atherton Bartelbys last blog post: Oh My Ears And Whiskers
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April 15th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Interesting! I think if you’ve already got a firm moral grounding, it won’t matter what kind of interactions you’re involved in (i.e. online vs. offline); right and wrong are already settled in your mind. Of course, how many of us DO have this moral grounding? And where did we GET it? From our parents? From our schooling? From the books we read? From being the shy outcasts who watch others interacting from afar? It’s a complicated question, and without having some definite ideas about what people’s moral systems revolve around in this day and age of atheism and agnosticism, I think it’s hard to say whether it’s the Internet giving rise to “immoral” behaviour, vs. some other societal issue.
Of course, if you just mean that because things move pretty fast, we are forced to make knee-jerk reactions to complicated situations, then yes, speed is not necessarily conducive to good behaviour.
OMG, Lauras last blog post: Amazon de-ranks thousands of LGBT books
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April 16th, 2009 at 4:28 am
I’m sure you already know what I thin of this, so I’ll spare you the rant!
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AV Flox Reply:
April 16th, 2009 at 4:32 am
LOL! I almost titled it, “This Post Is Bait For Amber! Come Out, Come Out!”
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