Are social networks really dumbing us down?
Despite recent claims to the contrary, Danah Boyd thinks this is not the case.
Danah Boyd:
“Lady Greenfield’s claims that social network sites are “infantilising” the human mind. She made a speech to the House of Lords to encourage people to research her hypothesis. There is NO EVIDENCE to prove her claims. Listening to her talk, it is very clear to me that she has no idea how social network sites work. She bemoans users’ practice of collecting friends on social media, saying that no one _really_ has that many friends. She claims that today’s youth are spending more time with social network sites than any previous generation spent with TV or rock-n-roll (with no evidence to back that claim). She clearly doesn’t understand how people are using these, how they are being integrated into people’s lives. Nor does she have evidence for her claims. But the press has picked up her call to action as a formal report, often juxtaposing it with the MacArthur Digital Youth Report as a counterpoint. I find this deeply frustrating because I think that the fears of how the brain are being reworked are driven by a misunderstanding of youth engagement with social media.
That said, I think that there’s something to be said for how today’s youth are thinking differently than their parent’s generation. But I don’t think that it’s simply “caused” by new technologies. I think that we’re living in a society that has different priorities and I think that multi-tasking is more deeply prioritized than sustained attention by professional circles today. I think that we are being trained to be “creative” thinkers rather than productive doers and I think that this means that we are encouraged to draw connections between new things. I think that we are living in an environment that is structurally divided and that sociality is increasingly mediated. But I don’t think that the technology is to blame. I would argue that we’re addicted to our friends, not the computer. When the computer lets us get access to our friends, we look like we’re addicted to the computer. I think that a lot of the claims that are being made about the technology have more to do with systemic factors in today’s lifestyle. And I think that we do ourselves a disservice when we focus on the technology instead of the larger systemic picture.”