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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".

Arguing that social network sites are putting attention span in jeopardy,

Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.

She claimed that sense of identity can be eroded by "fast-paced, instant screen reactions, perhaps the next generation will define themselves by the responses of others".

She also warned against

The sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug addiction. So we should not underestimate the 'pleasure' of interacting with a screen when we puzzle over why it seems so appealing to young people."

Greenfield also warned there was a risk of loss of empathy as children read novels less.

She said she found it strange we are "enthusiastically embracing" the possible erosion of our identity through social networking sites, since those that use such sites can lose a sense of where they themselves "finish and the outside world begins".

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.

Social networking sites can provide a "constant reassurance – that you are listened to, recognised, and important". Greenfield continued. This was coupled with a distancing from the stress of face-to-face, real-life conversation, which were "far more perilous … occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses" and "require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones, those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously".

She said she feared "real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction."

The solutions, however, lay less in regulation as in education, culture and society.

Greenfield argued that the appeal of Facebook lay in the fact that "a child confined to the home every evening may find at the keyboard the kind of freedom of interaction and communication that earlier generations took for granted in the three-dimensional world of the street. But even given a choice, screen life can still be more appealing."

You become less conscious of the individuals involved [including yourself], less inhibited, less embarrassed and less concerned about how you will be evaluated."

But Greenfield warned: "It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations. We know that the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the outside world."

shift to another platform as it emerges. They might not maintain wikis, but Wikipedia is both useful to them and perhaps slightly exciting as its notoriety grows. To post to a forum, add to a frie

Social Networking in Higher Education Social Networking in Higher EducationBryan AlexanderThe many projects and services under the Web 2.0 umbrella are now a fact of the global information world. Technorati last tracked 70 million updated blogs, a number that continues to gr

networking services routinely enroll millions. Social music-sharing services continue to grow, as Last.fm continues to build a user base and Apple’s iTunes now maintains a social function, My iTunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/myitunes). It is no longer shocking to realize that photos are largely digital, rather than analog; it is also not surprising that they are published in active social networks, such as Flickr and Picasa. RSS feeds appear not only on most blogs and news sites, but on campus home pages and corporate intranets. Folksonomic tagging, briefly controversial, now appears in the most widely used platforms, like Amazon.com and YouTube.Such a list can go on, but students are sometimes better posit

participating in online social networks, consuming digital media there, and starting to create digital content. Web 2.0 is not remarkable; it describes simply the background structure of media and socialization.How can colleges and universities respond to this world, which has erected itself around us in a very few years? As we nurture campus networks, support users in their engagement with the entire digital cosmos, how do we respond to this subtle transformation in the environment? And as we continue our investment in licensed content, licensed applications, locally accessible databases, and password-protected courseware, how do we experience this parallel universe of sometimes breathtaking openness and sociability? Several avenues are open to us and have already been trodden by some institutions: learning from successful architecture, following new and emerging technologies that are changing learning (what some call Learning 2.0), and rethinking literacy.