A nice sketch of technology fear offers a counterintuitive model. It's the mirror image of haunted media, a good doppelganger to media panic stories.
First, Vaughn Bell realizes that research has actually been done about possible problems.
There is, in fact, a host of research that directly tackles these issues. To date, studies suggest there is no consistent evidence that the Internet causes mental problems.
I think that hits on the addiction trope, among other things.
Second, Bell checks to see if new media have any good effects.
If anything, the data show that people who use social networking sites actually tend to have better offline social lives, while those who play computer games are better than nongamers at absorbing and reacting to information with no loss of accuracy or increased impulsiveness.
Third, having reversed the polarity on the fear machine, Bell wonders about prior technologies:
In contrast, the accumulation of many years of evidence suggests that heavy television viewing does appear to have a negative effect on our health and our ability to concentrate.
Fourth, return the ball to the scary media narrative court:
We almost never hear about these sorts of studies anymore because television is old hat, technology scares need to be novel, and evidence that something is safe just doesn't make the grade in the shock-horror media agenda.
Imagine if mainstream media had been reporting on the internet like this, since 1990 or so.
There's a lot of good stuff in that piece, starting with its use of that terrific 2003 Journal of the History of Ideas issue. For instance, this fine jab at a great deal of scary-tech reporting and its evidence problems:
All of these pieces have one thing in common—they mention not one study on how digital technology is affecting the mind and brain. They tell anecdotes about people who believe they can no longer concentrate, talk to scientists doing peripherally related work, and that's it. Imagine if the situation in Afghanistan were discussed in a similar way. You could write 4,000 words for a major media outlet without ever mentioning a relevant fact about the war. Instead, you'd base your thesis on the opinions of your friends and the guy down the street who works in the kebab shop. He's actually from Turkey, but it's all the same, though, isn't it?
Comments