Don’t tweet me

Immediacy has become a staple of our society. Technology allows us to get what we want faster than ever before. No doubt that in many ways this is a great boon to our economy and access to information, but is there a price to pay for getting things as quickly as possible?

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have at least heard Twitter mentioned in some context or another. For those uninitiated in the specific workings of Twitter, it is a free “micro-blogging” service that allows users to instantaneously post whatever they wish, as long as it is 140 characters or less. Twitter also allows users to subscribe to the “tweets” of others, including celebrities, and receive constant updates.

The entirety of Twitter is based around one question: “What are you doing?” Users may write anything from, “Brushing my teeth,” to “Signing a new bill into law.”

Twitter has been publicly derided and satirized for its arguably useless updates about teeth brushing and what users are eating for lunch. Though some tweets can be meaningful, up to the second updates seem excessive. One may also tweet from their phone via SMS, allowing even quicker access. Oddly enough, most text messaging allows up to 160 characters before requiring you to split your message into two separate texts, whereas Twitter itself only allows 140.

So how meaningful can 140 characters really be? What is it that constitutes real communication? Our standard of communication has been steadily declining with each new technological invention and Twitter does us a great disservice by limiting word usage. First it’s 140 characters, then its 100, then only a word or two. Before you know it we will have devolved back to grunts and growls.

Where do we draw the line on meaningful communication? I am not sure I would consider short little blurbs to be meaningful and it is certainly not conversation. This also takes away from any real conversation we may have on a daily basis. I personally have had multiple instances wherein I will start a story only to have my friends stop me to say that they already read it on my Facebook. So much for social interaction.

A recent study at USC connected instantaneous social networking services, of which Twitter is one, to a decrease in morality for those who use them often. The study showed that many of the subjects who read a tweet did not have enough time to register empathy or reflect on what was being said. According to the researchers, this kind of reaction is particularly harmful to young, developing minds.

Twitter is particularly popular with teens since it allows them to stay updated on the status of their friends and favorite celebrities. Twitter may be causing their minds to get used to moving onto the next bit on information without reflecting on what they see. This could not only affect morality but attention span as well.

What Twitter is essentially doing is getting teens used to reading less than 140 characters at a time. Therefore, anything beyond that would be excessive to them. Many people underestimate the long-term impact that this could have on young minds. This effectively wires the brain to accept things in short form and creates a higher propensity for impatience. If this goes too far, schools may start having trouble getting students to read books for class; at least not faster than 140 characters in a sitting.

Twitter is too much, too soon and its instant and wide availability may be negatively impacting the next generation. Perhaps we should think more about where we are heading instead of what we can get right now. And just to put it in perspective, writing this article in Twitter would have taken more than 25 successive entries. Is that really where we want to end up?