By Mike King
It’s not been a great week for promoting the use of social media. The widely reported story about two young girls in Australia, who were trapped in a storm drain and used their mobile phones to update their Facebook status rather than call for help, did little to foster a positive image of young social media users. It is difficult to argue that these girls weren’t seriously lacking some basic life skills and common sense, but to imply that Facebook was somehow to blame is a bit rich.
Particularly when a study from psychologist Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling shows that Facebook enhances intelligence. Twitter, on the other hand, supposedly makes people stupid.
Dr Alloway studies working memory, the ability to remember, recall and process information. Working memory, according to Dr Alloway, has been shown to be more important than IQ when it comes to academic studies.
Dr Alloway claims that her recent study shows that Twitter and YouTube hinder the development of working memory because they constantly bombard the user with small chunks of information that require very little recall or processing.
The opposite applies to activities on Facebook or playing video games which are apparently good for enhancing intelligence because they exercise working memory. Based on the evidence from Australia I’m not sure that I’m convinced.
Of course, given that anyone on Twitter is likely to also be a regular user of a social media site like Facebook there’s almost certainly nothing to worry about. I’m sure they’ll all just cancel each other out. I’d be far more worried about kids spending hour upon hour passively watching TV.
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