Government say facebook is making attention spans too sho - hey what's that!

Ok, so a great piece of epic fail from our wonderful Government is what I choose to start this blog.

The Guardian reports on a great and in no way daft piece of research from Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution (in other words someone who is probably paid enough to know better)

Facebook et al risk "infantilising" the human mind

Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist.
...
She told the House of Lords that children's experiences on social networking sites "are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity".

Where to start? OK, how about:

When you were a kid (or for those of you with kids) do you really think that every interaction experienced by children is full of "cohesive narrative and long term significance"? My recollection is that most of what I talked about as a child was whatever was at the top of my mind at that moment. I certainly don't recall Beckett lurking at the corner of the playground listening in to conversations to try and capture some dialogue hints.

Maybe that's just me.

But the other thing is that this seems to be another example of public policy thinking being about 15 years behind reality. Is a long attention span necessarily the great virtue it once was?

Information hits us at such a rate and from so many different sources now that the ability to handle multiple strands of activity and move confidently between them surely has to be a more important mental skill than the ability to focus on one concept for lengthy periods.

I'm not saying that there is never a need for concentration, or an attention span. Just that clinging on to this odd train of logic which says "modern culture leads to shorter attention spans which is bad" has been around for decades and I'm not entirely sure it's true or that it's necessarily a bad thing.

But hey, it's not like this report has been taken seriously by anyone who's in charge of setting educational policy or censorship laws, is it? Ah. Oh.