Twitterteachers

We typically assume that the internet is turning kids into narcissistic, vicious cyber-bullies, but a growing body of research indicates that the opposite is true. New research suggests that spending time emailing, texting, and Facebook-ing might actually help both adults and kids become better friends and people

the more time college students spent on the internet, the more empathetic they were both online and off

Forty-five percent of 3,777 teens surveyed reported being bullied, but fewer than 20 percent of those said it had occurred online or via text messaging or phone. Almost 40 percent said it had happened in person. And two-thirds of those bullied online said they didn't even find the abuse upsetting.

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human brain networks represent a balance between high efficiency of information transfer and low connection cost

Members of the audience and other Twitter users were asked to tweet during the lecture about the concepts that were being discussed, using the hashtag #csftwitterbrain. At the end of the talk Professor Bullmore displayed the resulting image showing the interconnectivity of the hashtagged tweets, and explained how Twitter networks can be compared to the human brain network. “We found that the #twitterbrain network was somewhat like the brain network in being small-world and modular with highly connected hub nodes; however the brain network was more clustered and less efficient than the twitter network. So at first sight there were some points in common and some points of difference between these two information processing networks.”

“It has been intriguing to see the spectacle of watching the twitter network grow or evolve over the course of several days. And I have learnt a lot about the power of new media to engage and communicate, and the potential scientific value of using Twitter to map and measure social networks.”