Don't question the psychology but examine the medium for debate

There was a great deal of comment about the Times' article questioning the psychology of the users of twitter as there was after the Mail decided that the users of social media have a greater risk of cancer.

Jackie Ashley joins the debate in the Guardian this morning quoting the words of Baroness Susan Greenfield, the cross-bench peer and distinguished neuroscientist,who says

is the new way of social interaction actually changing the brains, and indeed the minds of a generation, and if so, what might that mean?

It is an important point and before the defenders of the digital revolution jump on the bandwagon,it is worth pointing out that

Greenfield's argument begins with an acknowledgement of the virtues of Facebook and similar sites, particularly for children and teenagers who have been confined to their homes because of their parents' fear of letting them roam outside

But there are downsides,a lack of social interaction,a reliance on speed reading.As Ashley says

When it comes to complicated issues, we also need time and space. Not everything can be whittled down to text messages. We are living in a world of fact boxes, ever shorter sentences and flatter, simpler statements; and I wonder if we can begin to resolve some of these complex challenges this way

What I would and what I see regularly is that the art of interpretation has been lost because quite simply the context in which a comment is said is lost if it is conveyed electronically.