Comments on: Is the Internet making my child crazy? http://saynotostigma.com/2012/07/is-the-internet-making-my-child-crazy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-the-internet-making-my-child-crazy a blog of The Menninger Clinic Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:19:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Ryan Smith http://saynotostigma.com/2012/07/is-the-internet-making-my-child-crazy/comment-page-1/#comment-1695 Ryan Smith Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:28:28 +0000 http://saynotostigma.com/?p=1693#comment-1695 Thank you for writing this blog. I have long been interested in the roll technology plays on the human psyche, and have felt it has been a mostly ignored facet of psychological research. Sometimes it seems there is only interest in the face of a tragedy, where you have a flurry of research looking to explain/place the blame on videogames, social networking or smartphones. The article itself was filled with some rather alarming findings, but seemed lacking in any positive aspects. During my own look at similar research a few years ago, I came across an article describing how people who play videogames had increased visual attention over non-players and further that the researchers were able to increase the visual attention of non-gamers by having them play games for a set amount of time each day. So it can’t be said the impact overall is negative. In my opinion we’re currently in the midst of a relatively rapid change in human behavior due to technology, behaviors that may seem dysfunctional now, may very well be considered normal in the future. When I think about the great technological inventions that have had a large impact on the world, television, telegraph/phones, printing press, etc., it’s hard not to wonder to what degree they’ve changed not just behavior but how humanity as a whole thinks. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is instead of trying to figure out what is ‘bad’ and what is ‘good’, we should instead be concentrating on what is changing, and what it means for now and the future. Thank you for writing this blog. I have long been interested in the roll technology plays on the human psyche, and have felt it has been a mostly ignored facet of psychological research. Sometimes it seems there is only interest in the face of a tragedy, where you have a flurry of research looking to explain/place the blame on videogames, social networking or smartphones. The article itself was filled with some rather alarming findings, but seemed lacking in any positive aspects. During my own look at similar research a few years ago, I came across an article describing how people who play videogames had increased visual attention over non-players and further that the researchers were able to increase the visual attention of non-gamers by having them play games for a set amount of time each day. So it can’t be said the impact overall is negative.

In my opinion we’re currently in the midst of a relatively rapid change in human behavior due to technology, behaviors that may seem dysfunctional now, may very well be considered normal in the future. When I think about the great technological inventions that have had a large impact on the world, television, telegraph/phones, printing press, etc., it’s hard not to wonder to what degree they’ve changed not just behavior but how humanity as a whole thinks. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is instead of trying to figure out what is ‘bad’ and what is ‘good’, we should instead be concentrating on what is changing, and what it means for now and the future.

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