“We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist”, she told the UK’s Daily Mail.

“My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.”


Lady Greenfield, head of Royal Institute, has concerns that internet-obsessed children were losing the ability to concentrate and communicate away from the screen. Regular web users displayed a need for constant reassurance typical of small babies.

While speaking to House of Lords she also warned that conversations in chat rooms, message boards and on networking websites were replacing the face-to-face interactions that are key to developing a child’s sociability.

“I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,” she said.

“It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations.”

Toxic Childhood author Sue Palmer told the Daily Mail, “We are seeing children’s brain development damaged because they don’t engage in the activity they have engaged in for millennia. “I’m not against technology and computers. But before they start social networking, they need to learn to make real relationships with people.”

Teenagers spend an average of 31 hours a week online, research suggests. Social networking sites like Facebook that allow young people to keep in touch with their friends, publish photos and post updates on what they are doing are particularly popular.

Scientists are divided about the mental consequences of the digital revolution; a study published last year showed that internet use could improve brain function and speed up decision-making but at the expense of empathy and the ability to think in abstract terms.

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All of the profile owners were 18 years old and living in the United States.

Some 54 per cent of the profiles contained references to risky behaviors. One-quarter of the profiles examined mentioned sexual behaviors while 44 per cent referred to substance abuse. Almost one in three spoke about alcohol use while 14 per cent referred to violence.

The study, published in the current issue of Archives of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that teenagers, whose profiles indicated religious involvement or had references to active participation in a sport or hobby, were less likely to contain any kind of risky information.

“Once we started getting the findings, we wondered, why are they doing this?” Moreno said. “Do they not get it? And, if they don’t understand that this is public, can we send them a cautionary message to let them know just how public their information really is?”

More than 90 percent of teens in the United States have access to the Internet, according to background information from the studies. About half of all teens who use the Internet also use social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18.

Kimberly Mitchell, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal and a research professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, “It’s important for parents to understand how important these social networking sites are to kids,” she said. “They’re here to stay, and they’re not all evil. There can be some really positive aspects to these sites. But adolescents aren’t necessarily thinking 10 years ahead, when employers or college administrators may look at these sites. Teens live in the here and now, so parents need to talk to kids about the longer-term impacts and help them think through some of the repercussions.”

Moreno suggested that parents ask teens to show them their MySpace or Facebook pages. “Teens will definitely balk, but they balk at lots of things, like curfews,” she said. “Some parents feel it’s a violation of privacy, like reading a diary, but it’s out there, it’s public.”

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Ask any college student and they will tell you that they have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. They love how it lets them connect with friends all over the world but hates how it seemingly devours their time. However, the scale seems to tip more towards the hate side, as it is now responsible for landing more and more students in sticky situations with the school and the law.

Many teens say they know someone who has landed in trouble for a Facebook posting. Teachers and administrators, they say, are cruising Facebook looking for incriminating evidence. Todd from Paul VI Catholic received a “friend request” from someone he thought was a pretty new girl coming to the school. The guys were excited. “She never showed up,” Todd says. He thinks it was an administrator. “I don’t see it being a kid—that’d be the lamest prank ever.”

It’s possible that school administrators are creating fake profiles to search online for bad behavior, but some say they don’t bother. Parents and other students bring pictures to the school’s attention.

“The information is readily available without us having to go trolling for it,” says Michael Doran, principal of Rockville’s Wootton High.

Student officers also gave out color-coded bracelets based on the amount of personal information that kids posted on their profiles. Students who listed cell numbers got yellow bracelets; kids who gave out a home number, address, or work information got red.

“We followed one girl home from work and videotaped it, showing how easy it was for somebody to stalk you,” says guidance counselor Jennifer Taylor. “We got her permission and showed it in our assembly.”

To illustrate the ugliness of Wootton talk online, the student government pulled quotes and wall messages from students’ profiles and posted them without attribution around the building. Among the quotes:

Not Jewish, thank you very much.
I hate dumb people, especially blonds with a lot of acne.
I love getting high.
Rape is not a crime—it’s surprise sex.

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