Are sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo molding a generation of attention deficit, self-centered young children who can only be satisfied by instant gratification? Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield thinks so. She goes as far as to say the current increase in autism could potentially be linked to the prevalence of people spending time on social networking sites?!? She claims that children's brain development is being damaged because of technological advances. According to psychologists, students are no longer planning essays before starting, thanks to word processors, and GPS have negated our need to decipher maps. So, shouldn't that make children smarter? They can use word processors, and navigate using GPS rather than scribbling sentences on paper and trying to understand how to refold a giant road map. In my opinion, those simple tasks were nothing more than obstacles to our development...hurdles that hindered our progress. Children these days are much more efficient now and arguably more creative and social due to technology. I find the biggest problem with these types of 'fear technology' articles is that they don't understand the world we are creating and living in today and continue to diagnose based on the norms and rules of generations past. [via blogrunner]