BBC2’s The Virtual Revolution on Saturday, February 20th 1 will claim that young people’s brains are being rewired by the Internet in such a way that they are:
- unable to concentrate on reading an academic book for study
- incapable of ‘linear’ disciplines like reading and writing at length
The article also states that psychologists claim that ‘within three years, hundreds of thousands of British teenagers will require medication or hospital treatment for mental illnesses caused by excessive web use.’ Sounds a bit like the old arguments about violent video games turning every teenager into a mad-axe killer, TV-watching resulting in square eyes, or masturbation resulting in blindness.
Based on the outline supplied in the article, the actual evidence seems rather thin.
Yes – young people are ‘skipping’ around the Internet from page to page but does this mean that they cannot read a book sequentially? Not necessarily. I am not a digital native – according to the definition – yet I also skip around the Internet. I also skip around books and rarely if ever read an academic book from cover to cover – or a journal – or even a newspaper. I skim read, look for the relevant bits, use the contents list ….
One of the claims is that this rewiring will prevent writing at length. What is the evidence for this? Indeed an article in The Independent on 11 February 2 suggests that there is evidence to the contrary. The article is reporting on the experience of a primary school where introducing children and in particular boys to blogging has them producing 5000-word pieces of prose without coercion.
I will be watching the programme on BBC2 with some interest and scepticism.
Conclusion: It is easy to make statements about the effects of technology without an evidential basis. The true picture is probably somewhere inbetween – yes there will be an effect, but teaching and learning strategies should take this into account as part of normal teaching practice.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Joseph 3 for bringing the article ‘Students brains ‘rewired’ by the Internet’ to my attention.
- Telegraph (2011) ‘Students brains ‘rewired’ by the internet’, The Telegraph, (online) Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7205852/Students-brains-rewired-by-the-internet.html (Accessed 12 February 2011). ↩
- Garner, Richard (2011) ‘Blog early, blog often: the secret to making boys write properly’, The Independent, 11th February, (online) Available from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/blog-early-blog-often-the-secret-to-making-boys-write-properly-2211232.html (Accessed 13 February 2011) ↩
- Shea, J. (2011) ‘Students brains rewired by the internet’, H800-11B>Resources2Share, (online) Available from: http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=300507 (Accessed 6 February 2011). ↩