Michael Jackson

Internet Content in Crisis: Are We Becoming Mental Grasshoppers?

Firm experimental evidence [1] chiefly concerns TV watching: young children who watch a lot of TV are more likely to suffer from low attention span. Informal evidence [2] from schoolteachers confirms these results.

Extrapolation from TV watching to the use of typical internet sites is not well established, but surely plausible. Evidence [3] that internet users read very little of each web page visited strongly suggests that prolonged concentrated attention is rare.

The effect of TV watching and internet surfing is crucial in the years of childhood and youth when the brain is being formed and fundamental skills acquired: the danger is to young people for whom TV and the internet are the first formative influences. If you don't learn to talk in early childhood you will never learn to talk. Perhaps learning to concentrate for a prolonged period is similarly, though less dramatically, constrained.

Past changes (such as writing, printing, and portable books) have been beneficial to human intellectual life. So any present or foreseeable change must also be beneficial? The conclusion may be true, but the argument is a non sequitur.

[1] See, for example, "Christakis D A, Zimmerman F J, DiGiuseppe D L, McCarty C (2004); Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. In Pediatrics 113,4 pp708-13"; also "Dorothy G Singer; To watch or not to watch. In Televizion Research 20/2007, pp20-24".

[2] See, for example, "Jane M Healy; Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It; New Horizons for Learning, 1991".

[3] See, for example, "Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 6, 2008:" at www.useit.com/alertbox....