The headline reads, “Twitter can make you immoral, claim scientists.” Unfortunately, that’s not quite what the scientists said, but the UK’s Daily Mail seemed content with extracting the juiciest conclusions and burying the rest below the fold. To wit:

A study suggests rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the ‘moral compass’ of the brain to process.

The danger is that heavy Twitters and Facebook users could become ‘indifferent to human suffering’ because they never get time to reflect and fully experience emotions about other people’s feelings.

Presumably, channel surfing and skimming the newspaper would have the same effect. Especially if you had, say, skimmed that article in the Daily Mail.

Perhaps it’s worth considering some evidence from the other side. Like a recent case where a 16-year old girl was worried that her Facebook friend in England might harm himself, and took action that very likely saved his life. Or the story of young man who intervened to stop his MySpace friend from committing suicide. Or even followers of Demi Moore’s Twitter page that sprung into action to avert the death of one of their own.

People are still people, and as a rule, they care about one another. That’s not going to change. Will the advent of Twitter, MySpace, texting, and other forms of immediate communication cause our children to grow up with a different world view? Sure. Just like television, telephones, and rock & roll altered our world view. It didn’t make us dysfunctional, and it won’t cripple them either.