Slashdot Mirror
Email Worse Than Marijuana For Intelligence?
wallykeyster writes "The Guardian is reporting that a recent study at King's College indicates that the average IQ loss of email users was 10 points (or six points more than cannabis users). Details on The Register as well. The Register has a related story about how computers make kids dumb and an apparent "problem-solving deficit disorder" observed in children who use computers. I thought it was television that rotted your brain?"
I think it would be wise to rethink this.
Is it the e-mail that makes people dumber, or dumb people that uses e-mail?
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
Sure the internet can make you more intelligent if you spend your time reading Wolfram Mathworld, Scientific American, Project Gutenburg texts, and Wikipedia...but who does? Is the back-forth banter here really intelligent? Seems more like smalltalk. The bloggers are just writing about each other. Everquest is pulling people away from reality entirely.
Maybe the library isn't such a bad idea after all.
that allowing computers to constantly shift your focus from one thing to the other, impairs your long term ability to focus on one thing and imprint it on your brain in serious depth.
My prescribed solution (IMHO)? A weekend per month secluded from all electronica, preferably with someone else, along with non-technical books, and one or more chess sets. Or better yet, a program once a month that provides a rewarding experience that reinforces one's ability to just **focus**.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
My 5 year old son has consistently been called "best in class" and "brilliant student" by his schools' staff - obviously to my pride and joy ;-) - being an IT guy, a gamer, as well as a dad, I have always taken a relaxed attitude towards pc use and gameplay. He never really played anything too challenging or involving - a bit of tuxracer, a bit of sonic, etc. Until a few weeks ago, when some of his schoolfriends started playing some more involving games, and he wanted to keep up. "Bionicles" was duly installed, and away he went.
We are now 2 weeks later, and my wife and I just - like, 30 mins ago - finished a discussion about how to remove the game from the pc whilst making it look like an accident.... His schoolwork has plummeted, his teachers are really upset - his concentration is just gone, and he isn't interested in playing, arts, crafts, friends or schoolwork. He is a completely different boy, and its really worrying us.
Make of it what you will, but this gave me a first-hand look at the whole issue, and has me pretty disturbed.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
I MEEN OMG!!! DOES U LOSE ALL THOOSE QI PTS 4 EMALING LIKE THIS!?!?!?!?!?! Seriously, If you are going to use e-mail like a retard then it probably does make you stupid. For some reason people seem to think that because it's an e-mail grammar, punctuation and spelling can go out of the window. It's just like text messaging short hand. I try where possible to write e-mails, text messages and instant messages with reasonable grammar, spelling and punctuation. It takes a little more time, but you soon learn to type faster and more accurately because of it. There was a case in Britain not long ago where a student wrote an entire essay for their GCSE's (exams for 16yr olds) in txt message short hand. I believe that the sudden proliferation of new means of communication (txt messages, e-mails and IMs) mean that children learn txt short hand before learning grammar or typing skills. This means that they end up with some ugly short hand with no spelling required (since anything in the ballpark will let the reader know roughly what you're trying to say) and no grammar skills. Since most of them will be using txts and IMs before actually studying them in class it's no wonder that the fail to learn the correct way of doing things.
I myself am 14 years old, when in was 12, i had amazing scores on tests and other school related things, however after i have gotten more into computers (iv built 3 for myself, 10 for friends) my schoolwork has declined. However blaming this on email, for me at least, is stupid. Its not email that hurts my schoolwork, it is computers in general. They are just so damn interesting, i have learned more from my time on computers then i ever have in school, the only poblem is, i am not learning about the metric system, i am teaching myself astrophysics and reading steaven hawlking, instead of shakspear.
I would like to do better in school, however i find it very hard for me to motivate myself to do my science homework, because i already know it, and if i am not learning something new, i have signifigently less entergy to put into it. There is no cure, as far as i can see it, besides throwing away my computer, which i will never do.
Its depressing, in a way, to go from A's to C's, but at the same time, i am learning a much more valuable skill and learning about more interesting things which also have use in the world.
For me, its not Email that is killing my schoolwork, it is information. I have a drive to seek out info, and thanks to the internet, There is more information out there that i wish to learn then i can without my school work suffering.
we loose the skill to do it manually. the same is said about calculators, and power saws.
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Sure the internet can make you more intelligent if you spend your time reading Wolfram Mathworld, Scientific American, Project Gutenburg texts, and Wikipedia...but who does?
SciAm I skip because it costs money. But I read at least one Wikipedia article per day, if not a dozen to research an informative answer for a Slashdot comment.
(according to my relatively uninformed theory) basically you can think of the the visual processing system as a set of imaging filters connected to a collection of non-linear discriminators. the filters are intrinsically geometric because that is the optimal configuration for multi-aspect target recognition -- an optimal pattern reached by evolution, learning or some combination thereof. (its also interesting to note that the facial recognition subsystem is -not- multi-aspect, it only works when faces are oriented upwards).
thus, drugs don't directly cause geometric hallucinations, they simply cause the system to malfunction slightly in such a way that the underlying structure is revealed (kind of like feeding an impulse into a filter to estimate its frequency response -- the malfunctions consist of a bunch of random activity spikes were none are normally expected).
this is not to contradict what you are saying, which I think is a neat idea. but it may suggest that the development is not unique (i.e., the optimality of geometric filters is universal or mathematical in nature)
personally i feel noticably stupider for 1-2 days after smoking pot, and then its gone. hallucinogens make me feel like a genius for about 48 hours, and then when it wears off I can't remember what was so great about my ideas.
I wonder what happens to pot smokers who also use the internet and watch tv.
I haven't read the study beyond the linked article, but personally I suspect that the whole problem extends far beyond email use.
Western society is built on distractions, and on interrupting people from what they're doing, much of which is to do with commercialism. For instance:
It doesn't surprise me at all that people's attitudes to doing things have been changing quite dramatically, and it seems quite feasible that the effects of this on people's wellbeing could be negative. Emails popping up and being addressed are just an extension of everything else that's been happening with advances in technology and societial attitudes.
I would love a tool, similar to the one that you suggest, that encourages being able to focus on things. I'm not entirely sure how it could be guaranteed to work, though. To me, many of the possible problems seem to be embedded quite heavily in the way that society now works.
Meanwhile, I think I'll try forcing myself to concentrate more by shutting down lots of other things while I'm browsing slashdot. It's a shame they're so easy to start up again.
Man, I can relate. MUDs, BBSing, IRC, there went much of highschool and early college. Especially the early chunk of college since all my CS classes had nice little telnet connections, only when I switched majors (and lost the in-class telnet) did my grades improve.
/. to take up all my time. Where would we be without the internet, I don't know, but I am sure that we all would be more productive. (world peace or /. ... hmmmmm)
I broke up with one of my first g/fs because "I was about to level" on Genocide. I spent more time learning how to code on a MUSH (and later a pirated Diku) than I ever sunk into schooling.
I guess now that I'm a mature adult, I can depend of
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
If your ability to use standard English grammar and spelling is predicated on the use of spell-checkers, then consider this:
When I was your age, I used a typewriter, and was damned glad it was electric, and had error-correction cartridges so I didn't have to use white-out. A few years later, when I was in college, I couldn't even use a computer myself: I had to punch cards and take them to the Data Processing priests, who would take them into the Inner Temple and add the Holy Job Control Cards that blessed my jobs unto the Almighty Mainframe. Then I'd come back hours later, or the next day, to get my printout and my stack of cards back. If I had a syntax error, I would have to fix that and repeat the process. I had no choice but to proofread my own work before submitting it.And I walked several miles to school every day, uphill both ways! And I LIKED IT! Damn whippersnappers....
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I forgot to bring up the most important point of that post. That exemplar of journalism called the Register then claims computers have made kids perform worse in school.
The reality is that kids accomplish less in school than in previous years is because American public schools are declining in educational quality, not that the kids are using computers. Public schools when I was growing up were already neglecting non-curicula specific training. There were articles in the late '80s and early '90s critical of public schools for the decreased critical thinking skills of its graduates. It was easier, more quantifiable, and discouraged independent thought (which improves control) by just making kids memorize more and call it education.
Bush Jr. then proceeds to contribute to this decline by mandating national testing for children and penalizing schools by witholding funding if they underperform on the test. The school systems are now forced to spend educational time on improving test performance, not critical thinking or teaching material not found on that test.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
"It sounds to me like your friends don't have an addiction problem, they have a self-discipline problem. [...] If I were a betting man, I would wager that if they weren't invovled in Everquest, they would have found some other diversion to consume their time and cause them to drop out of college."
I don't do drugs. I don't smoke, don't drink. I don't use caffine. I don't gamble. I am not addicted to computer games, online or otherwise. I have never had a problem with my self-discipline where an activity took up so much of my time that it became detrimental to my career or health.
Until I started reading Slashdot. I now spend about 12-16 hours/day reading Slashdot. I can't help myself. Even reading at 0, it takes me forever to get through all of the articles. And I go back and reread them after a day or so, in case someone posted something interesting after I read them the first time. I read Slashdot until I literally fall alseep in my chair. I have stopped reading other message boards, playing online games, and watching TV, so that I could spend more time reading Slashdot. I cook only TV dinners now, rather than more involved (and more nutritious) meals that take more time away from my computer. I shower only once or twice a week now, instead of every day, and change my clothes only when I shower. I no longer go to museums, or take walks in the park. I have not set foot in my woodworking shop for over two years.
I never had any problems with addictive behavior or self-control before I started reading Slashdot. So don't tell me that if those students weren't involved with Everquest, they would have found something else, because I can tell you from personal experience that it is possible to become addicted to a very narrow set of stimuli, in their case, Everquest, in my case, Slashdot.