Psychologist: Facebook makes you smarter, Twitter makes you dumber
Have you ever written a text message and then failed to correctly multiply 3 by 7 right after you pressed "send"?
Have you ever posted an update on Facebook and instantly reached for your Proust? And have you ever sent a tweet, looked in the mirror, and suddenly believed that you had a twin?
Well, according to the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, a psychologist from the University of Stirling in Scotland, can explain all of this.
The good doctor has spent many of her days studying working memory, which allows people to retain and use information. She believes it to be a far more significant measure of the well-being and intelligence of humanity than, say, IQ.
Alloway spoke Sunday to the British Science Festival at the University of Surrey and rather gushed about the success she has had in training children to enhance their working memory.
And she happened to mention that certain social-media behaviors are rather more conducive at developing working memory than others.
While Facebook apparently expands the working memory and therefore "enhances intelligence" because the mind has to work in keeping up with one's 500 friends, Twitter does not deserve such glowing praise.
Instead, Alloway released both barrels of her working memory in a critical appraisal of microblogging. She said that because Twitter was so succinct, "your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections."
She was equally critical of anything she deemed "instant"--YouTube and texting, for example. On the other hand, video games and Sudoku allegedly involve more thinking depth, more tracking of past actions, and more mapping of those things you might do in the future. Therefore, they enhance working memory.
I find myself instantly recoiling from the doctor's pleasantly radical analysis. I begin to wonder whether, for example, it makes a difference if you are watching a four-minute video on YouTube about, say, the Large Hadron Collider.
I wonder if it counts that you find a link on Twitter that leads you to a deeply intellectual debunking of all research methods in psychology.
And I wonder whether it really can be true that keeping up with a bunch of supposed friends on Facebook can make you just that little bit smarter.
Surely when you think of all the time some people spend on Facebook, doesn't it make you think that perhaps, just perhaps, they need to get a life? Or at least a better working memory of one?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
I also was intrigued by the comment of a poster on her website (http://tracyalloway.com/index.php/working-memory/dyslexia-working-memory/) about dyslexia and the English language. Her reply concerning ?orthographic transparency? leaves me wanting more information on this subject.
Sometimes controversial comments do lead to a better understanding of things.
Comparing FaceBook to Twitter in terms of brain activity and working memory is clearly for publicity.
Our entire generation fails miserably at simple language. I'm not talking about typos, I'm talking about not understanding basic, fundamental English rules that should be established by third grade. I can't go a day without seeing multiple examples of "should of"s, people who can't for the life of them understand the difference between "then" and "than", "I seen", and my new favorite technique of simply dropping the past tense entirely: "Yesterday he paint my new rims".
Taking shortcuts in informal communication is one thing. When people pursuing college "educations" can't even get through a paragraph without multiple mistakes an elementary school student would laugh at, AND they don't even see what's wrong once you point it out, something's gone pretty wrong with what's become acceptable communication.
"but I'd say every website centered around attention ******** and gathering as many imaginary friends as possible has to be an IQ wrecker"
It's not about IQ - that's the whole point! It's about working memory. Most IQ tests rely on academic abilities to some extent - some of the questions involve maths and english, which, without a decent academic education you will simply not understand.
Working memory is undoubtedly improved by the likes of facebook - If you have 500 friends, imaginary or otherwise, so when you go online there's probably at least 5 people who want to talk to you all at once, it certainly improves your working memory as you need to keep track of 5 conversations at once, it is not the academic content of those conversations that is important, it is about keeping several threads of thought live in your "instant access" working memory at once.
As for facebook vs. twitter - yes, keeping track of a friend network helps memory but I"m not sure people use Facebook in that capacity. It seems to simply be a pretty (I use that term lightly) instant rant system. I guess what I'm saying is that her conclusion seems overly simplified - which I'm sure it was and that may have been appropriate in the right context, but not as necessarily a causal generalisation of intelligence - even if relating to memory as memory is far more complex than simply tracking friends and I'd argue twitter forces you to do that too.
Some would also argue that spellcheck in word dumbed the populace down, but no one points out how predictive sms has increased the requirement for people to know how to spell...
No. The average twitter user posts 7 tweets a day about the mundane tasks they are doing.
"Sitting on the bus..."
"Making fish for dinner"
"At the movies"
They fantasize that maybe _someone_ actually cares about what they are doing every minute of the day.
FaceBook's status updates resemble the tweet, but users don't usually update them as religiously as they do on Twitter.
And as for attacking Dr. Alloway, that doctorate DOES in fact mean she's good at her job. Her job is to be a researcher. If you bothered looking up a list of her publications over the last many years you would see that she has done a lot of work in the area of memory and brain processing.
a) Yeah... and how tweeting 7 times a day is gonna reduce your attention span?
b) People who tweet frequently (and have followers) don't just tweet what they cook, they actually think what they will write. That sure takes more effort than clicking on 'poke Mary'
I do agree with you in one thing, I don't follow matemathicians or scientists, because they're not on twitter. But I have read some good articles that my friends tweeted about.
"If you are on twitter and follow only scientists, mathematicians, and others of the educated world and read all the articles sent to you from those people about math, science ect. than how is twitter making you dumber than the person on face book that only talks to comedians."
You are assuming that comedians are not well educated. If you want to be a good comedian you need a good brain. The next time you run into Jay Leno, ask him about the different mutation rate of the Y chromosome vs mitochondria. You might also ask him how this relates to the accuracy ancestral tracking of male linage vs female.
I am not saying that comedians are stupid, what I should have said is if you only listen to comedians jokes. the unintelligent kind such as the "your mama jokes" or " you know your a red neck when"
No comedian in their right mind would tell that one! but nice try.
Twitter is for human sheep.
so you are calling president obama, peter frampton, cnn, adam savage, chuck grasley (iowa senetor), and thousands of computer programers, mathematicians, and scientists stupid.. well isn't that something.
As for the rest, not really sure what kind of Serious Business you're going to fit into a one-liner, but I don't think most actual "programers" and real scientists are coming home from their 10 hour days to twit around. Perhaps you're thinking of the perpetual students living on college campuses and studying the social "sciences".
For example, the Victorian Government (Australia) utilised this service to keep people up to date on the bushfires crisis. It allowed fast, accurate updates for people that were following the service while reducing the burden on the websites.
Granted, this is just one example, but it simply points out that generalising a service like this is in itself just as ignorant as you are claiming users to be.
Jaguar717: I'm with you on the language front. I still capitalize, punctuate, etc. emails, and many texts. My grandchildren probably think I'm even weirder than most grandfathers are supposed to be.
No wonder our culture seems to be on a slow downhill slide. Think I'll go out by the pond with a glass of wine and engage in a bit of omphaloskepsis.....and I won't Twitter about it.
given this sounds mostly like speculation for the sake of attention, but i still think facebook's making me a genius
did she say anything about how they compare to actually being social and having real friends instead of being on the computer all day?
A game of Age of Empires, for example, is more stimulating mentally than a game of, say, DOOM.
Horses for courses I suppose.
Just like I could argue twitter via mobile is superior due to having to spell well to use predictive sms where on the computer you get spell checks. A valid argument maybe, but you'd agree it is terribly flawed and limited.
Words, that evoke Images that become Symbols and move people often require few words.The Internet is awash in images.Perhaps Twitter is more evocative? This idea would also benefit from some research, even related to memory, emotional memory.
Who do you really think has a bigger Facebook/myspace group: the Prom-Queen-in-Chief, or Ron Paul?
Most tweets I read are links to interesting articles. Scientific American and New Scientist regularly put pointers to the olline material on twitter, material with technical content but approachable by a non-specialist. I know of other sources pointing out links the same way. Moreover, I don't have to chase down the interesting articles myself, other people using twitter will forward on links they find interesting and relevant. I don't normally read the New York Times, but since using twitter have read several articles and oped pieces from it based on a tweet that made it clear why I should read it. And, it isn't just articles from the press, that I get links to--people post links to scholarly articles that are available online. Twitter helps me keep abreast of what is happening in fields I care about.
I also receive a lot of tweets that are inspirational or motivational messages and quotations--those people end up segregated into my boredom-only pile quickly, although I do scan them for "real" content and sometimes do find a gem therein. However, while I don't find such messages interesting, they aren't mundane either. They general reflect some insight that someone thought interesting enough to say or to cite.
Now, I won't argue with the psychologists findings. I don't think an average person using twitter is going to naturally gravitate to mind-expanding conversations there upon, and thus magically become enlightened. However, if one has an interest in something mind expanding, I think one can find interesting conversations about it on twitter and interesting people who are actively discussing it, 140 characters of sound-byte at-a-time if you will.
Twiiter is mis-understood because its roots in tracking "status". However, it is evolving into a collabolrative human-powered search engine where you can interact with knowledgeable people on numerous topics. In the process, you are likely to be exposed to some of their wit and other banter, and yes plenty of marketing people who want to spam you too.
Perhaps, one can do that on facebook and I just haven't yet found the right community to join. The advantage of twitter is that most everything one does is public, so therefore finding a person who does what you are interested in is as simple as searching for keywords that tend to only be used in conversations about the topic you want to discuss. That leads you to the people discussing said topics.
As a network security researcher for Intel, I need to remind you that publicness is also the downside of twitter, but also of facebook. Any information you put onto the internet is available to people you may not wish to have it and to think you can proect it once it is there is naive. (Note: this paragraph hould be considered a paid advertisement, since Intel pays me to be concerned about that topic, and discuss it on twitter, facebook, blogs, and any other relevant forum.)
If you use twitter to find and share wisdom, you can do that. If you use it for other purpsoes, you will find those there instead.
You can even tweet that if you like....
I also think that perhaps the intention of twitter has been oversimplified by this psychologist as to being, in itself, a social networking service where it is often used just to foward you or keep you up to date with the INTENTION of you reading more on the subject.
the idiocy of the THESIS and Analysis , and CNET propelling it ; is nauseatingly stupefying !
AtomD21 - did you mean ' we should HAVE seen this coming ' (as opposed to ' we should OF seen this coming ' ) in your comment where you where informing everyone what a stickler you are for proper communication ? Hope this piece of constructive criticism is helpful.
CU L8R, M8 !
As per the examples, it says that twitter is not upto the mark and makes you dumb. But i guess playing games on facebook does not do better.
If you follow the people who share information and knowledge, you are likely to gain more knowledge. Its only your thinking which will make the things change.
- by uuf6429 September 8, 2009 3:24 AM PDT
- Facebook making you more intelligent? That's just crap.
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- by screamapillar September 15, 2009 8:54 PM PDT
- The study isn't misleading, the headline is. I'm not sure the psychologist was suggesting that using Facebook was akin to taking 'intelligence' vitamins and thus making you smarter, she was comparing the memory links formed by the two.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (51 Comments)You'd be intelligent if you threw away Facebook and instead did the office work you should be doing.
Twitter? Same thing.
The study is somewhat misleading.
Regards,
Christian Sciberras
Software Developer.
As for your opinion re: facebook/twitter at work, let me respond to that briefly
1: If you office doesn't have a formal, written policy on this that has been properly consulted and communicated, stop complaining and/or berating your workers about it.
2: Do you let people who smoke go on cigarette breaks? For some, Facebook/twitter are the equivalent
3: People actually have lives outside of work, as such they may access Facebook/twitter when not in the office where your jurisdiction is well and truly off limits
4. People make personal calls, emails etc all the time at work: providing it is within reason, are you suggesting these should be banned? If so, you are a particularly poor/draconian people manager who must have terribly high strung, unhappy workers. If not, then perhaps you need to be more open minded about the legitimate (inlcuding for professional development) uses of facebook/twitter and maybe go write a policy, seek some legitimate agreement on it via genuine consultation and then implement it - rather than whining about it here.
5. There are legit work based functions for networking (facebook) and following current tech trends (twitter)
LASTLY - your assumption people access facebook/twitter only at work leads me to believe these are the practices you would use (people generally judge others on their own practices) - ergo, why are you posting on a forum on CNET instead of doing your work?