Three researchers have published an article (a publicly available abstract is here) in Computers in Human Behavior titled “Less effortful thinking leads to more social networking? The associations between the use of social network sites and personality traits,” which examines the relationship between “need for cognition” and participation in social networking sites. “Need for cognition” is one of those wonderfully self-explanatory terms that social scientists occasionally come up with: first articulated in the 1950s, it refers to a person’s preference for cognitively challenging activities, and is sort of the nerd version of the need for speed. If you prefer to spend your time reading Physical Review Letters B, you have a high NFC; if you watch Jersey Shore with the sound off because it’s too tiring to follow the dialogue, you have low NFC. Or as Nick Carr explains,
NFC, as Professor Zhong explained in an email to me, “is a recognized indicator for deep or shallow thinking.” People who like to challenge their minds have high NFC, while those who avoid deep thinking have low NFC. Whereas, according to the authors, “high NFC individuals possess an intrinsic motivation to think, having a natural motivation to seek knowledge,” those with low NFC don’t like to grapple with complexity and tend to content themselves with superficial assessments, particularly when faced with difficult intellectual challenges.
The article’s conclusion:
As media multitasking is increasingly becoming part of the media routine in the lives of Internet users, the variable of media multitasking was incorporated into the analysis of SNS [social network sites] use, which, to our knowledge, is the first study that did this. For a better understanding of social networking, this research also investigated other online activities that may predict the time spent on SNS, which included total online time, online time for study/work and time in surfing with no specific purposes.
The key finding is that NFC [need for cognition] played an important role in SNS use. Specifically, high NFC individuals tended to use SNS less often than low NFC people, suggesting that effortful thinking may be associated with less social networking among young people. It is possible that those with a higher NFC are more likely to seek mental stimulation through other cognitively challenging tasks, such as doing puzzles and searching for product information. Those with a lower NFC may be more comfortable with the rich peripheral cues available on SNS and feel more at home with the communication tool.
High NFC individuals were also significantly less likely to add anyone to their SNS accounts than low NFC individuals. But there was no difference between them in terms of maintaining several SNS accounts or sharing information through these sites. There was little difference among low, medium and high NFC groups regarding media multitasking, which might suggest that media multitasking is pervasively performed among young adults. This may also add evidence for the observation that media multitasking has become such a critical part of the media routine in the lives of Internet users that it has little to do with one’s tendency of engaging in and enjoying effortful cognitive activities.
This has been folded neatly into the “Facebook makes you stoopid” meme, though it may be that Facebook appeals to dull people more than to thoughtful people. As Carr puts it, “if you want to be a big success on Facebook, it helps to be a dullard.” It doesn’t require deep thought to hit the Like button.
While it’s interesting, I find it problematic that the study doesn’t differentiate between different social media platforms. Facebook, Mendeley (a social media platform for scientists), and LinkedIn are different things, and you use them for quite different purposes: I don’t post pictures on Mendeley, I don’t use Facebook to look for a job, and I don’t use LinkedIn for scientific research. Another question is whether some high-NFC users treat services like Facebook or MySpace as the equivalent of Jerry Bruckheiser movies– sites that you visit when you don’t really want to think. When I use Facebook, I limit my interactions with it: I do relatively little browsing of the news feed, tend to hop on and off quickly, and don’t turn on the online chat. For me the issue isn’t the absence or presence of peripheral cues, but rather the volume of content and amount of time responding to it– or rather, making its creators feel good by responding to their posts– would take. I don’t worry particularly that Facebook will make me stupid; I worry that it will absorb time I can better spend doing other things (even very low-NFC things like laundry).
More broadly, I think arguments along the “Facebook makes you stupid by unwinding neural pathways” lines assign too much influence to technologies. Ultimately they become another form of technological determinism, a kind of neuroscience-spiced version of high-tech marketing (use this and be smart / more connected / more productive / happier!) or leftist critiques of technology. But such arguments obscure the fact that users always have choices– sometimes very limited, but still extant– about whether and how to use technologies; and in this case of neuroscience-backed claims about technologies changing us, they tend to emphasize the possibility that novel technologies rewire our brains, but not that that same neuroplasticity means that we can get back whatever cognitive abilities we worry about losing to the World Wide Web.