The Message Still Matters

“It’s very difficult to generalize about ‘technology’ in the abstract. We squander a lot of oxygen and ink worrying about the effects of ‘television’ and the ‘internet,’ but the data quickly demonstrates that these broad categories are mostly meaningless. When it comes to changing the brain, content is king. Here are the scientists: ‘In the same way that there is no single effect of ‘eating food,’ there is also no single effect of ‘watching television’ or ‘playing video games.’ Different foods contain different chemical components and thus lead to different physiological effects; different kinds of media have different content, task requirements,and attentional demands and thus lead to different behavioral effects.'”