CorpComms Magazine

Just my luck. After months of ignoring the Tweet phenomenon, I jump onto the bandwagon just as new scientific research announces it is bad for the brain. Apparently, I need to sign up to Facebook if I want to be smart. (The scientist responsible for the research, Tracy Alloway, has obviously never read the DSGi Facebook pages - where an apostrophe is about as rare as a picture of Jordan with her top on, and words of one syllable seem like a struggle.) 

It seems that technology which requires a short attention span, like Twitter or some YouTube clips, is bad for our brains, while Facebook requires the use of more memory and information. Those two features are the real foundations of learning and not, as previously thought, IQ, so poking your friends is actually good for you (if a little uncomfortable for them).  

But if I am doomed, spare a thought for actor, comedian and recognised brainbox Stephen Fry. Not only does this new research mean that his television show might require a new name (though 'Information and Memory' has less of a ring than QI), but as one of the world's foremost Twitterers, he must be petrified. As Alloway warns: 'Twitter can cause harm because it produces a stream of information every second with no opportunity to process or manipulate that information.' Actually, put like that, it sounds like my mother.

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