Are Twitter and Facebook Affecting How We Think?

Are Twitter and Facebook Affecting How We Think?

Is constant use of electronic gadgets reshaping our

brains and making our thinking shallower?

By Neil Tweedie

How many times do you click on your email icon in a day? Or look at Facebook, or Twitter? And how many times when reading on the internet do you click on a link navigating away from the text that was the original object of your enquiry? The web, it seems, is like an electronic sweet shop, forever tempting us in different directions. But does this mental promiscuity, this tendency to flit around online, make us, well, thicker?

Nicholas Carr, the American Science writer, has mined this theme for his new book, “The Shallows”, in which he argues that new media are not just changing our habits but our brains. It turns out that the mature human brain is not an immutable seat of personality and intellect but a changeable thing, subject to “neuroplasticity”. When our activities alter, so does the architecture of our brain. Tm not thinking the way I used to think,” writes Carr. “I feel it most stronglywhen l’m reading.”

Disponível em: www.telegraph.co.uk. Acesso em: 27 fev. 2012.

Neil Tweedie levanta vários questionamentos sobre a utilização de diferentes recursos tecnológicos disponíveis hoje em dia. A partir desses questionamentos e dos argumentos do escritor norte-americano Nicholas Carr, o texto sugere que