Possible effects of electronic social media on gifted and talented children’s intelligence and emotional development

High-level intellectual development

Evidence is emerging that that emails, social networking and texting might not only be changing children’s cognitive functioning, but also the physical make-up of their brains. Electronic social media probably affect both children’s style of learning and the way they use their minds. However, if this is true, we are not sure how. Any changes may be of a similar kind across the whole range of intelligence, or they may affect different levels of intelligence in different ways.

We do know, though, that cognition and even brain structure can be changed by the way the brain is used. An example comes from studies of London taxi drivers. To earn their licences, drivers in training spend three to four years cycling around the city, memorising a labyrinth of 25,000 streets within a 10-kilometre radius of centrally placed Charing Cross train station, plus thousands of tourist attractions and hot spots. Additionally, drivers must show they are able to instantaneously calculate the swiftest route between any two points. ‘The Knowledge’, as these skills are called, is unique to London taxi licensing and culminates in a series of very difficult exams that only about 50% of candidates pass.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans over five years found that a licensed taxi-driver’s right posterior hippocampus—a seahorse-shaped section in the brain that is crucial for long-term memory and spatial navigation—was 7% larger than normal by a significant difference (Zeidman et al., 2012). Their intensive training was apparently responsible for their larger-than-average memory centres. In fact, the longer someone had been driving a taxi, the larger his or her hippocampus was, as though the brain had expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London's streets. Excelling at one form of memory, however, may have inhibited another as the licensed taxi drivers did worse than non-taxi drivers on tests of visual memory.

If this can happen to adult brains, it is more than likely that the effects of specialist training and means of learning will have a similar effect on the make-up and functioning on the developing brains of children—for the rest of their lives.

Some researchers believe that too much attention to screens and fleeting superficial interactions diminishes children’s brain power and that the Internet provides a poor schooling for considered thought. For example, the Pulitzer Prize non-fiction winner in 2011, Nicholas Carr (2010), after considerable research into the scientific findings on the subject, concluded that although we enjoy the Internet’s bounties, we may be sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply. And yet, one could also say that tweeting focusses your mind on the crucial point of whatever research or story you are tweeting about. It also provides another platform to get your ideas out there and noticed.

Human thought, Carr said, is shaped through ‘tools of the mind’ so that changes in our brains come not only from responses to our experiences but also the means by which these are delivered. His prize-winning research suggests that the technologies we use to find, store and share information can physically reroute our neural pathways (as with the cab drivers). We have known for centuries that creativity is influenced by the tools of the hands and mind, and all in a socio-cultural setting (Wertsch, 1998). If, for example, simply using a thicker brush changes the painting on the easel, how much more might a radical change of perception change the development of creative thinking?

Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase of the 1960s—‘The medium is the message.’—meant that the means of communication is itself part of the message. Understanding is changed because of the way information is delivered and perceived. Carr’s thesis has a ring of truth, and if true, the deterioration of deep intellectual thought will soon be measurable. There is, though, a counter argument that certain kinds of intelligence as measured by intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are going up.

A strange phenomenon has been described by James Flynn of the University of Otago, New Zealand (Flynn, 2012). Beginning in the 1950s, he demonstrated a year-on-year rise in measured intelligence of about three IQ points a decade, called the ‘Flynn effect’. The increase has been highest at 20 points per generation (of 30 years), in Belgium, Holland and Israel, and lowest, at 10 points per generation, in Denmark and Sweden. Although the data are limited, it seems that the increase in IQ is accelerating. In Holland, for example, scores went up most (over 8 points) for the most recently measured period, 1972–1982.

Yet while advanced countries may even be reaching a plateau by now, developing countries have yet to see this rise at all. Flynn believes this is due to modern changes—such as more intellectually demanding work, greater use of information technology and smaller families where each child gets more attention. For nearly a century, he says, first world youngsters have become very much better at manipulating abstract concepts such as hypotheses and categories. Something major is happening in their heads. It is not so much that natural intelligence is simply going up; the big changes are in the way in which information is being received and used.

In theory, then, we should be seeing proportionately more gifted individuals as the years go by, and longitudinal studies should pick up the changes. This change could even alter the bell-shaped curve which social scientists use to see what is normal and what is unusual. The gifted come in at the right-hand tip of the curve, indicating relatively fewer of them. Possibly that slope will change form. But it may also be that the familiar IQ measure has to be adjusted to new styles of knowledge acquisition and reasoning.

Certain intelligence tests which use abstract, non-verbal patterns, like the Raven's progressive matrices, are possibly the best designed to measure this new way of thinking. Yet the old-style tests which ask for more memorised information are still the most popular, tying in with the school-style learning required for examinations. Flynn says it is not that our ancestors were more stupid, but that they thought differently. He provides an illuminating example: ‘What do a dog and a rabbit have in common?’ Whereas a bright modern child would say they are both mammals—an abstract answer—fifty years ago they might have said that you catch rabbits with dogs—a concrete answer.

This emerging style of cognition offers a greatly superior facility to be able to think through both theoretical and practical problems. Computers for education and even games can boost the curious child’s knowledge and intellectual agility. Just using everyday appliances, such as iPads, tablets and mobile communications equipment, demands a more abstract type of perception and reasoning, which older generations can find extremely difficult.

Subjectively, in my private psychology practice I am seeing increasing numbers of unquestionably gifted children between two and five years old measured within the top 1% of the population. These very young children appear to thoroughly enjoy the intellectual tasks, and it seems to me that the higher their intelligence is, the greater their pleasure is in the challenges. At barely two years old, little ones can draw simply, explain similarities and differences, deal with geometric shapes, spot a missing bit of a picture—and read fluently. Almost all of them know how to use a tablet to play games.

As I am the only psychologist in the UK who specialises in assessing very young potentially gifted children, I have no means of comparing what I experience. It is difficult to know whether the increase in parents seeking help is due to the Flynn effect or to increased concern with gifts and talents. (Nor, can I say why increasing numbers of young children are diagnosed by their teachers as showing Asperger’s syndrome.) Typically, the gifted children I see have the essential problem of education. Parents are often desperate to know how to support those who are reading fluently and doing simple arithmetic by the age of three, long before they reach formal school in the UK at the age of five.

The media spread of indiscriminate information is not only a matter for the children; parents use it too. Any Twitterer, blogger or Wikipedia addition may distort the truth. The effects of the electronic social media go well beyond individual development. Slick concerted presentations can indeed change beliefs and behaviour whether true or false.

We scientists are very fond of ‘on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand’ type of argument, which is not usually the way of social media. Carl Gustav Jung (1964) coined the expression: ‘the shock of the new’. So often in the past, new inventions have been ill received in society; the underlying objection is that they are usually seen as a threat to morality. Notably, translating the Bible into the spoken local language meant that people could read it for themselves and not be directed by a priest. But evidence and fears about new electronic social media is far more shocking than its novelty. There is scientific evidence that children’s developing brains are being changed in both their functioning and form, and there is a serious need to step back and look closely at what may be happening.

Relationships and dangers

Networks are not new. Individuals have always been connected to a broader interactive set of social groups. Relationships are essential for emotional support and quality of life—for most animals. When these connections are limited to any degree, such as with individuals afflicted by autistic spectrum problems, it is extremely hard to function in society.

There are risks and benefits to belonging to any social group, whether of competition or cooperation. The size of the group too makes a big difference to how it works. Membership in very close groups, such as family and friends, are more costly in time and emotional involvement. A widely spread group, such as an electronic social network, lowers intimacy and in theory costs much less in time and energy, unless it becomes addictive. Blogging, like any other activity, takes time away from something else. Yet, talent and content still count, as does style of presentation. Boring is boring in any medium.

Deep personal changes we cannot yet anticipate in the coming generation could involve the multiplication of selves that is now possible online. There are children for whom electronic avatars can become almost real, whether of their own electronic images and virtual lives, or those of others. Heavy involvement with electronic social media might be involved in increasing mental illness such as schizophrenia (Dokoupil, 2012). Certainly, many more children are being diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum and put on drugs. It is difficult to say, though, whether this is due to a current trend to this diagnosis, its long awaited recognition or the effects of electronic social media.

In all social groups, there needs to be minimum level of mutual trust. The stronger the trust is, the stronger the group is. This precious trust depends very much on the theory of mind capacity to interpret the social intentions of others (Wellman, 1990). Abuse of that trust comes, for example, in vicious anonymous emails and tweets. Innocent children may take trust for granted which leaves them open to abuse at many levels: older sophisticated and experienced youngsters may lack trust and set up barriers which prevent intimacy. In spite of all the good words said about electronic media, cyber bullying—trolling—whether from individuals or groups is rampant. It has never been easier or more widespread to spread lies and threaten others. It can and does drive youngsters to suicide.

The theory of the social brain proposes that supportive social groups increase intelligence (Sutcliffe et al., 2011). The idea is that individual brain size—that is the actual volume of the neocortex—evolves to match the demands of membership in the social group. That idea, though, is based on non-electronic social interaction, which in the old days would amount to about 150 personal contacts at any time. It might no longer be applicable when great numbers of people in social groups never actually meet or interact personally. Social networking sites can carry many more members, some of whom have only weak ties in the lists of friends. This might only be a keyed-in name—and even that may be a false one with no interaction at all.

We know all too well reports of sad youths in their bedrooms who spend all their waking hours on the Internet. Some may be intellectually gifted, but I doubt whether anyone would call them healthy. The myth that gifted and talented children are more vulnerable to negative social influences is still widespread, but the evidence shows that they are in fact emotionally stronger than other children (Neihart et al., 2002). Without that emotional strength, they could not be creative and high achievers (Freeman, 2009). In theory, they should be less afflicted by electronic social media, but there is no evidence to support any conclusions.

Some unexpected secondary effects are also beginning to emerge from the many hours of staring at screens. For example, it is not a good idea to read electronic books in bed, because research reveals that back-lit screens suppress melatonin levels in your brain by as much as 22% (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Lighting Research Centre, 2012). This brings insomnia, and insomnia has other effects on daily life such as fatigue, bad temper and so on. Fatigue affects the individual’s precious supply of willpower (Baumeister and Tierney, 2011). Each morning provides people with a fresh and renewed supply of willpower—but only after a good night's sleep and a healthy breakfast.