Ops! The result of this study made by a psychologist saying that Facebook is better at preparing you to achieve success life than Twitter’s downgrading effect may spark some varied reactions. But it doesn’t matter which side you might be on, the important thing is to take this study with a grain of salt while at the same time try to look at its merits. Who knows, it might actually be valid in the end.The study was conducted by psychologist – Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Scotland. Dr. Alloway was said to have extensibly studied working memory and has even developed a working memory training programme that was said to greatly increase the performance of kids age 11 to 14 who are considered slow-learners at a school in Durham, Scotland.
According to her study, those who spent time on Facebook, interacting with their friends, playing Facebook games and doing other activities in the social networking site was found to have improved their “working memory”. A proof was the fact that after 8 weeks of undergoing through “JungleMemory” training, these kids gained 10 point improvement in their IQ, literacy and numeracy tests.
Dr. Alloway said that the fact that Facebook users keep track of their updates and think about what they are going to post next are beneficial for exercising one’s working memory.
In contrast, Twitter may have the opposite effect since the microblogging site just let users receive “an endless stream of information which are very succint”. These information do not require processing for one to get what message it is trying to convey. Hence a Twitter user fan’s attention span is reduced and one’s brain is not engaged at all.
Since I am both a Twitter and Facebook user, I really couldn’t tell whether the result of the study is true or not. How about you folks? If you are a Twitter or Facebook user only, would you agree to the result of the said study?