Tweeting makes you stupid
A (clever) study from Scotland is causing a stir among (silly) Twitter users around the world.
Let me tweet you something: tweeting makes you stupid. That's what a clever Scottish psychologist from the University of Stirling found out. At least she thinks so. Her theory: the 140-character short messages on Twitter make little demand on the working memory, require little attention and therefore hardly strengthen the networking between nerve cells. In comparison, Facebook is clever - because complex actions such as inviting friends or chatting require the brain to work hard and constantly short-circuit its synapses. The more complex the functions, the more active the working memory, the smarter the user. The result is obvious, isn't it?
The 140-character rant following this publication was unreadable. Tenor: "If Twitter made you stupid, we would probably have noticed!" All angry people know what the researching lady missed: keeping it short is difficult. It's much more complicated than explaining content at length, meandering from stick to stick and from thought loop to thought loop and not knowing where you started at the end of the sentence. You don't need scientific analysis to realize this. A little self-experimentation is enough.
Well, whether the brain works when tweeting depends on the message you want to spread: "Make coffee" is not really a particular challenge and does not provide the reader with any particular insight. But if you see Twitter as a medium for providing information, exchanging opinions and winning people over, you not only need your brain stem, but also the rest of your thinking apparatus, nerves included. Highly compressed information requires highly concentrated action.
Once again, in 140 characters: Tweeting can stress you out, drive you crazy. Whether tweeting makes you smarter is debatable. But the compression exercises don't make you dumber.
Anne-Friederike Wilhelm - @AFWilhelm - @werbewoche
The 140-character rant following this publication was unreadable. Tenor: "If Twitter made you stupid, we would probably have noticed!" All angry people know what the researching lady missed: keeping it short is difficult. It's much more complicated than explaining content at length, meandering from stick to stick and from thought loop to thought loop and not knowing where you started at the end of the sentence. You don't need scientific analysis to realize this. A little self-experimentation is enough.
Well, whether the brain works when tweeting depends on the message you want to spread: "Make coffee" is not really a particular challenge and does not provide the reader with any particular insight. But if you see Twitter as a medium for providing information, exchanging opinions and winning people over, you not only need your brain stem, but also the rest of your thinking apparatus, nerves included. Highly compressed information requires highly concentrated action.
Once again, in 140 characters: Tweeting can stress you out, drive you crazy. Whether tweeting makes you smarter is debatable. But the compression exercises don't make you dumber.
Anne-Friederike Wilhelm - @AFWilhelm - @werbewoche
