Facebook Will Rot Your Brain

Ran across an interesting article from a British web site with the rather provocative title "Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist". You can read the full article here. Now I'm not a top neuroscientist so I can't judge the science, but based on what I read, it sounds like a lot of hooey (yes, that's a technical term). Here's a quote from the article:

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.

Hello? Since when have young people not had short attention spans, wanted instant gratification and been self-centered? Check out this quote:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

That one is allegedly Plato quoting Socrates. We think we have it bad today - at least my teenagers don't "gobble up dainties" (I think).

My point is, let's not blame the technology for a problem that has existed for centuries. Every generation thinks the subsequent one is filled with losers. Socrates just didn't have the Internet around to take the blame for it.