{"id":1057,"date":"2009-04-17T05:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T10:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/2009\/04\/i-got-yer-indifference-right-here-pal.html"},"modified":"2009-04-17T05:36:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T10:36:00","slug":"i-got-yer-indifference-right-here-pal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2009\/04\/i-got-yer-indifference-right-here-pal.html","title":{"rendered":"I Got Yer Indifference Right Here Pal!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The headline reads, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-1169788\/Twitter-make-immoral-claim-scientists.html\">Twitter can make you immoral, claim scientists.<\/a>&#8221;  Unfortunately, that&#8217;s not quite what the scientists said, but the UK&#8217;s Daily Mail seemed content with extracting the juiciest conclusions and burying the rest below the fold.  To wit:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"font-style: italic;\"><p>A study suggests rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the &#8216;moral compass&#8217; of the brain to process.<\/p>\n<p>The danger is that heavy Twitters and Facebook users could become &#8216;indifferent to human suffering&#8217; because they never get time to reflect and fully experience emotions about other people&#8217;s feelings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Presumably, channel surfing and skimming the newspaper would have the same effect.  Especially if you had, say, skimmed that article in the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it&#8217;s worth considering some evidence from the other side.  Like a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/7983725.stm\">recent case<\/a> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-17852_3-10156887-71.html\">story of young man who intervened<\/a> to stop his MySpace friend from committing suicide.  Or even <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-17852_3-10212297-71.html\">followers of Demi Moore&#8217;s Twitter page<\/a> that sprung into action to avert the death of one of their own.<\/p>\n<p>People are still people, and as a rule, they care about one another.  That&#8217;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 &amp; roll  altered our world view.  It didn&#8217;t make us dysfunctional, and it won&#8217;t cripple them either.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;\">Brought to you by Tim&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/\">-Read the whole blog here-<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The headline reads, &#8220;Twitter can make you immoral, claim scientists.&#8221; Unfortunately, that&#8217;s not quite what the scientists said, but the<\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2009\/04\/i-got-yer-indifference-right-here-pal.html\" title=\"Read I Got Yer Indifference Right Here Pal!\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}