Alone In A Chat Room Full of Strangers

Have you ever spoken without thinking?

Ever regretted it?

Undoubtedly one of the advantages of the Internet and digital technology is instantaneous communication, but it does come with a downside.

Following up from a February interview in which Baroness Susan Greenfield, an Oxford neuroscientist has pointed out the dangers of children living their lives almost completely online - and it has nothing to do with obesity.

In it she said:

Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.

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

The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.

In her latest piece for Britain's Daily Mail, Baroness Greenfield goes further:

By the middle of this century, our minds might have become infantilised - characterised by short attention spans, an inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity.

One effect, the fragmentation of our culture, is already occurring: the violent videos posted on YouTube.

Steps must be taken to stop this - to safeguard the mindset of the next generation so that they may realise their potential as adults.

The Baroness identifies four neurological and psychological factors that an unregulated and over exposure to an online environment.

The whole article is well worth reading.

Just one more quote:

Social networking sites satisfy that basic human need to belong, as well as the ability to experience instant feedback and recognition from someone, somewhere, 24 hours a day.

At the same time, this constant reassurance is coupled with a distancing from the stress of face-to-face, real-life conversation.

Real-life chatting is, after all, far more perilous than in the cyber world as it occurs in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever responses, and it requires a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and even to physical chemicals such as pheromones.

None of these skills is required when chatting on a networking site. In fact, one user told me: 'You become less conscious of the individuals involved (including yourself), less inhibited, less embarrassed and less concerned about how you will be evaluated.'

Indeed.

So imagine Twittering with no keyboard interface at all - from your mind to your screen?

It's no longer the realm of science fiction - or bad Clint Eastwood movies - reports Live Science:

Twitter messages are so short - a 140-character limit - that you have to really think about what you want to say.

For Adam Wilson, thinking is all he has to do.

Earlier this month, Wilson thought of a tweet (the name for a post to the social networking site) and poof, his computer read his mind and sent the darn thing. At just 23 characters, Wilson's message, "using EEG to send tweet," was done with a computer setup that interprets brain waves.

Scientists are extolling the technology as a breakthrough for people with limited mobility.

But as everyone knows, today's cutting edge technology is tomorrow's children's play thing.

Mind-control games may be the coming thing: Mattel plans to demonstrate a Mind Flex game (also due this fall), which uses brain-wave activity to move a ball through a tabletop obstacle course, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday.

In the Force Trainer, a wireless headset reads your brain activity, in a simplified version of EEG medical tests, and the circuitry translates it to physical action. If you focus well enough, the training sphere, which looks like a ping-pong ball, will rise in the tower.

Technology is wonderful but it is a tool and it should be used safely and sensibly - certainly not at the expensive of the wonderful, exciting, fulfilling, frustrating and maddening interhuman relationships.

The face to face kind, not the Facebook variety.