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?"

Comments

Right angle?

[markild]

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?

Every day...

[Ars-Fartsica]

Every day computers make people easier to use!

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 article is a LONG way of saying

[Travoltus]

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**.

Well, funny and all but.....

[passthecrackpipe]

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.

Re:Well, funny and all but.....

[fimbulvetr]

I pretty much failed a year for MUDs too, however:

Pre-MUD typing speed: circa 20wpm.
Post-MUD typing speed: circa 90-100wpm, depending on content.

So I guess that's my lemonade:)

Re:Well, funny and all but.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with Oliver, but with one addition: tell your son in advance what you are going to do. He will protest and give you a hard time (hold your balls out, man), but he may lose your trust and never forgive you if you unexpectedly destroy the game and his player data.

Re:Well, funny and all but.....

[MrBigInThePants]

My brother just stopped going to work. Started with "sick days" and then nothing. He was in a semi-management position (12 staff under him) that could have turned into something better.

He has spent the last 6 years playing computer games, 14 hours a day.

Now he just got a job in a service station and this is a major leap forward...

Games...

OMG!!!

[Aneurysm]

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.

Wikipedia is a karma whore's best friend

[tepples]

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.

It's much more than just email, too

[jesterzog]

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.

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:

• Television, which the vast majority of people base their lives around, interrupts everything for commercial breaks every few minutes. People are being asked to concentrate for short spurts of time and then switch off or do something else.
• The standard formula for popular music is to produce songs that last about three to five minutes. Commercial radio often plays one song at a time, and then encourages listeners to switch modes by playing commercials. Some albums are still designed so that the entire album is an experience to listen to, but with others the disjointed focus of the music still completely changes between tracks. Compare this with older forms of classical music, for instance, for which it's common for some movements and symphonies to last tens of minutes or hours.
• Modern communication devices such as telephones, especially mobile phones, encourage people to be on demand all the time to deal with new problems and tasks immediately and as they arise. Technologies such as SMS encourage people to divide their attention even further, having a conversation in many very short messages and often when also doing something else. Compare this with some time ago when it would often be common to be out of contact except for particular times. (eg. Reading snail mail, or arriving at the office.)
• Personal computers, at least the ones that most people owned, used to be very bad at multitasking. This made it necessary to only run one main application at a time. It wasn't possible to use a computer for word processing at the same time as spreadsheeting, without fully closing down one and starting the other. Today, typical workstations allow people to easily and frequently switch between many tasks at once.

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.

shhhhh... I'm about to level.

[Omestes]

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.

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 /. 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)