The Internets and My Parents Generation

I usually refrain from you-just-don't-get-me-you-old-person-you rhetoric. I hate what it usually represents. I hate that the culture of Mad Men was effectively obliterated by a bunch of smelly boomers whining about how their parents just didn't get it, man, Mom 'n Dad will never understand "Hair" and what makes me me, man.

That being said, this article titled "Scientists ask: is technology re-wiring our brains?" highlights this something of a generational divide in relation to the internet. The lede betrays a brain so ill-at-ease with technology that I had to check to see if it was written by Ted Stevens.

What does a teenage brain on Google look like? Do all those hours spent online rewire the circuitry? Could these kids even relate better to emoticons than to real people?

These sound like concerns from worried parents. But they're coming from brain scientists.

Firstly: BRAIN scientists?!?! That sounds like a second-grader's description of his father's job. "My mommy's a cake maker and my daddy's a brain scientist."

Secondly, am I alone in detecting a mild confusion and panic at the changing times? I mean, couldn't we just replace the words "Google", "online", and "emoticons" with "jazz", "dancing", and "records" and have a Concerned Parents of Milwaukee pamphlet from 1922?

And then there's this:

When the brain spends more time on technology-related tasks and less time exposed to other people, it drifts away from fundamental social skills like reading facial expressions during conversation, Small asserts.

So brain circuits involved in face-to-face contact can become weaker, he suggests. That may lead to social awkwardness, an inability to interpret nonverbal messages, isolation and less interest in traditional classroom learning.

Because we all know that teenagers free from the taint of technology are never socially awkward, they never fail to accurately catch the unspoken message, and goldurnit, they are plum giddy about all that skool lernin!