Internet obsession is making our children ‘passive and fragile’ Susan Greenfield, an outspoken critic of cyberspace, couldn’t have picked a more apt location to be interviewed: the foyer of […]

Susan Greenfield, an outspoken critic of cyberspace, couldn’t have picked a more apt location to be interviewed: the foyer of a hotel in Shoreditch in London, the epicentre of the capital’s tech city, which is chock-full of solitary, identikit twentysomethings, all of whom are plugged into their laptops.

Baroness Greenfield, a leading brain specialist, is perhaps the most vocal and highly qualified of the growing number of people asking whether our obsession with the internet could have worrying implications.

And as a woman who speaks her mind on often-sensitive issues – and has the audacity to challenge a communication platform that all-to-often reverts to anger – she has caused her fare share of controversy.

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This has understandably made her wary of being misrepresented and haranged for her opinions all over again.

‘No-one interacting, sitting in the dark’

“Look around you, all these people are in their own cyberbubble. Do you want to live in a world like that? No one talking, no-one interacting, sitting in the dark.”

Susan Greenfield

Thankfully, that doesn’t stop her speaking her mind, while frequently pointing out that she is voicing concerns that need to be checked out rather than stating them as fact.

“Look around you, all these people are in their own cyberbubble. Do you want to live in a world like that? No-one talking, no-one interacting, sitting in the dark,” she tells i in the hotel foyer in London’s Shoreditch, suggesting clearly where her own beliefs on the matter lie.

Still, while it may turn out that the dominance of the internet, in young people’s lives especially, may be storing up huge problems for the future, it’s just a theory and it may turn out to be fine, she insists.

Passively reacting to screens

Her major fear, she explains, is that children have gone from the active mode of game-playing and tree climbing enjoyed by previous generations – characterised by play, use of the imagination and, crucially, control of the situation – to passive, or reactive modes, in which they are constantly responding to the screens in front of them, which are designed and choreographed by others.

Having control of the situation gives you a sense of confidence and well-being because you are directing the show – which is what you do in real life – while being a passive recipient of external things does not – contends Greenfield, who has 32 Honorary degrees from British and foreign universities and a CBE in addition to her non-political life peerage.

“My own view is that, especially younger people, that haven’t rehearsed interpersonal communication, who haven’t climbed up trees and fallen out, or drawn a picture on a pad, or made up a game, or had a story read to them might be missing out,” added Greenfield, who looks considerably younger than her 66 years.

“The jury’s still out because this generation are only 15, 16 years of age. So they’re not in the workforce, they’re not parents and haven’t had long-term relationships. I’m not saying it’s a certainty but it’s a concern and it’s a discussion we need to have,” said Greefield, whose former roles include director of the Royal Institution, from which she was forced out in 2010 amid claims of sex discrimination that were settled out of court, and professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Oxford University.

These days she is chief executive of Neuro-Bio, a bio-tech company she co-founded looking into neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and a senior research fellow at Oxford. She is also a regular on TV and radio.

Greenfield is calling for a wide-ranging consultation to get to the bottom of the cyber-overload matter. This should involve teachers, social workers and healthcare professional, with the government best placed to co-ordinate activities.

So what does Greenfield fear could be the consequences of children spending so much time on the internet?

Young people with fragile senses of identity

“One hypothesis is that we may be looking at people with a shorter attention span, who take the world very literally, who are very self-referential and have a rather fragile sense of identity. People who are not very good at eye contact and personal communication and are, in a sense, rather infantalised – talking about themselves and referring everything to themselves,” she said.

She points to a 2014 study by the University about the extent to which our cyber-immersion is affecting society across the board. This found that the participants did not enjoy spending even short periods of 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think.

Instead, they enjoyed doing mundane activities much more while in many cases they preferred to give themselves mild electric shocks – particularly the men – than to sit and do nothing because they are so used to constant stimulation they would rather be doing something that’s negative than nothing at all.

Greenfield’s comments to i are the latest in a series of concerns she has raised about the effects of the internet on people’s brains – and which have often caused controversy among her peers.

Social networking ‘could negatively affect social interaction’

“We may be looking at people with a shorter attention span, who take the world very literally, who are very self-referential and have a rather fragile sense of identity. People who are not very good at eye contact and personal communication and are, in a sense, rather infantalised”

Susan Greenfield

Last year, she claimed that social networking sites could negatively affect social interaction, interpersonal empathy and personal identity and also warned that the internet may play a role in the development of autism – a comment three leading academics, including Oxford University developmental neuropsychologist Professor Dorothy Bishop, felt so strongly about they responded in a blunt editorial in the British Medical Journal.

This said her views were insufficiently supported by the scientific evidence and contended that social networking can actually enhance adolescents’ ability to make friends and the quality of their relationships.

Greenfield issued a four-page response denying her views were unsupported by scientific evidence.

For someone so forthright, professionally successful and – frankly – cool, Greenfield struck me as surprisingly down-to-earth and humble, expressing pleasant surprise that I had read her latest book, the pre-text of the interview.

Despite her strong concerns about the internet, her real passion, it turns out, is helping curb the devastation caused by Alzheimer’s. She is excited that her company may have made a significant breakthrough in terms of treatment, identifying what she believes is the main pathological driver of the disease. Developing this into an effective therapy is her number one priority.

“Of all the things I do in life that is the thing I care about more than anything. What people often forget is the toll Alzheimer’s takes on the carers, in terms of their wellbeing and their mental and physical health.”

“They say two million people will being suffering from Alzheimer’s in England by the middle of this century. But if you think that 10 people love you, that will be 22 million people’s lives who are affected. That’s why, if my gravestone can say ‘she made some advances to helping this disease’ I’ll play my harp happily upstairs,” she said.