Is new media bad for your health?

I attended a lecture given last night by Baroness Susan Greenfield at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. The talk had been organised by the Women of the Year as their Annual Lecture with the title: “The impact of current technology on the mind of the 21st century child”. It was a reprise of a speech she had given to the House of Lords.

Susan Greenfield

What she was trying to achieve, was to encourage government to fund research into the impact of current technology on the young brain. Her concern was whether the increase in autism and ADHD could be linked with the amount of time young children spend looking at computer screens. She didnt say that there was a link – but that it should be explored.

She talked to us for an hour to lay out her argument. (Some people were impressed that she talked for 60 minutes without notes – I was more impressed that she could stand for over an hour on ’skyscraper’ heels without toppling over!).

She explained how every single human brain is unique – which is truly remarkable. Every brain develops as a result of the interaction with the surrounding environment giving unique experiences. The more the brain is stimulated, the more connections that are made. Rats and mice living in a controlled ’sterile’ laboratory environment had less mobilitythroughout their lives than those who had a more stimulating environment. The more that the brain is used, the more it develops and grows. Research of London cabbies who have to memorise the streets of London to gain ‘The Knowledge’ have more highly developed hippocampi (the area of the brain which deals with memory).

Taxis

She also talked about the need to balance our human desire to have our senses stimulated with the need to develop meaning. The front cortex of the brain balances risk. Some research suggested that obese people are less risk averse than the rest of the population. The Baroness was concerned that children sat in front of computer screens may also be at risk from lack of development of this area of their brain. She showed research of how 21st children spend their time which illustrated that many spend more time interacting with technology than at school or with their families.

A panel challenged some of her views, but did seem supportive of the need for research. In particular, Martha Lane Fox, (one of the co-founders of Lastminute.com) argued that new technology provided access to so much knowledge, and could be a real force for good. She explained how she was able to use Twitter to seek views before the debate that evening and had a wide range of responses – which only new technology could provide.

Martha Lane Fox

My own take was to share Susan Greenfield’s concern that research does not seem to be taking ploace about the impact on the health of children – or the impact on society of the new technology. I was particularly concerned about the impact on children from disadvantaged backgrounds who may not have sufficient access to a range of experiences to balance the amount of time spent in front of a computer screen. However, I do think that research wll also find real positive features of the development of the brain through the stimulation given and through the access to knowledge. I also wonder whether government should fund the research, or whether the creators of new technology should also provide funding. I would also think it should be global research – although starting with the UK would be good!

I certainly felt that my own small brain had a serious workout last night – and now appreciate how important that is!

User Generated Content

So the key to social media seems to be content created by users. What Shirky says is that in the olden days, professional writers, journalists, editors, sub-editors, (your mother?) used to filter material before you watched or read it. Other people chose what stuff you would have access to. They decided whether a story was news, and whether it would get ‘air-time’. The government could even slap a ‘D-Notice’ on something (oops, now called a DA-Notice…surely nothing to do with a Duck’s Anatomy?) and the story would never surface.

So now, according to Meerman Scott, Shirky, Scoble, Godin and the other ‘in-crowders’, the real secret to social media is that the strength is in users generating material without the editing/filtering. So if I ‘google’ something, or look a subject up on Wikipedia, the odds are that I will get a mass of data to filter myself, and that the content will have had minimal editing by a ‘professional’.

As news stories break around the world ‘citizen journalists’ are filing the material onto social newtorks or direct to mainstream media channels.

If you story, or video or picture is interesting or quirky enough – who knows, you could gather quite a following!

Go to it!

Nudge

Nudge

I’ve just skim read Thaler & Sustein’s book “Nudge” . It is very similar in style to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” in that both race through a range of examples at an almost “breathless pace”. Writing about “Nudge”, Leavitt is quoted as “…it is fun to read, drawing on examples as far afield as urinals, organ donations and marriage”. In fact I found the examples in “Nudge” annoying – but perhaps it was beacuse I had already experienced the approach in “Tipping Point” and “Blink”. Gladwell’s books are easier to follow for me – more conversational. Rather like his talk on TED . Whereas Thaler and Sunstein write about “choice architecture” and “libertarian paternalism”. I get the ‘nudge’ examples, but the use of such unattractive terms puts me off their book and made it heavier reading than I wanted. I couldnt find any speeches by either of the on TED, but I guess its only a matter of time!

Blink

Having said that, I do think that their examples are useful to practitioners of social marketing. (Particularly as the NHS is investing heavily in social marketing these days)! The Texas Anti-litter campaign was interesting.

It was probably the hype which led me to have unrealsitic expectations about the book

Tipping Point