That today’s front paper story in the Daily Mail claiming that social media sites could harm a child’s brain is based on a House of Lords debate that took place more than 10 days ago (thanks to Chris Edwards for the link) tells you everything that you need to know about the quality of the journalism.
Last week we learnt that from the same paper that using Facebook could raise the risk of cancer.
Undoubtedly social media sites are changing the way that people of my generation (and much younger) communicate. People are more accessible and communication hierarchies have been flattened.
I caught up with Loewy’s chairman Mark Adams this morning. He said that peer-to-peer communication on social media sites was the source of most accurate information for details of school openings during the recent heavy snow falls in the UK.
But back to the Mail. How do stories such as this get into the paper, let alone onto the front page? The report results from speculation by Baroness Susan Greenfield during the Lords’ debate in which she said there may be a link between the increased use of social networking by children and attention deficit.
She goes further and proposes that there may be a link between social networking sites and autism using the reverse logic that autistic people find it easier to communicate via their PCs rather than face-to-face.
This is not neuroscience as we know it as Chris Edwards said. Students wouldn’t be allowed to get away with this level of conjecture in a school essay. It’s lazy journalism. And even lazier science.
Will Sturgeon has dissected the story paragraph-by-paragraph and gives further insight into how these types of stories reach the front page of a tabloid newspaper.
Tags: chrisedwards, socialmedia, susangreenfield
Is this just an easy scare story, or – given that the Fail has run a few like this recently – is DMGT really scared of the interwebs? Given the level of control they attempt to exercise on comments on their own website, I get the impression that new media in some way worries them in a way it doesn’t worry, say, the Guardian.I guess the Mail’s heavily angled brand of news “reporting” demands a fairly high level of information control, which social networks undermine. Perhaps they don’t want a generation of potential readers growing into their Mail-reading middle age with sharper critical faculties than their parents?Or am I overestimating Dacre’s intelligence?
well said. but then again, it’s pretty predictable. the news agenda has had its full of twitterati stories… so now we’re onto the backlash – wherever it can be found. cancer? it’s just kind of funny.= don’t you think…??
it would be interesting to know when attention deficit disorder was first recognised as a medical conditition and to compare subsequent recorded incidents of it with the growth in internet useage…I suspect hoever that watching hours and hours of fast imaging and mind numbing TV cartoons is a more likely suspect… in any event people of all ages should just get out more
Stephen,This is the Daily Mail or as my old English teacher said “The lighter side of fascism.”Why bother getting worked up?Rob
@Bill – I really couldn’t even begin to guess the editorial strategy. My best guess is that Dacre is chasing readers.@this too will pass – Interesting point. I’ll dig around. The answer is probably in Susan Greenfield’s book – Tomorrow’s People: How 21st-Century Technology is Changing the Way We Think and Feel.@Roger and Rob Artisan – Its reach is frightening. It has a circulation of 2.2 million.