Cell phones make kids faster, dumber

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Faster & dumber" is even worse than "slower & dumber."

Think about it.

JL


On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Ann Burlingham <ann at burlinghambooks.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ann Burlingham <ann at BURLINGHAMBOOKS.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Cell phones make kids faster, dumber
>
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>
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Dennis Baron<debaron at illinois.edu>
> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dennis Baron <debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU>
> > Subject:      Cell phones make kids faster, dumber
> >
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> >
> > There's a new post on the Web of Language:  Cell phones make kids
> > faster, dumber
> >
> > Last year the Librarian of Congress warned that texting was
> > responsible for a drastic decline in American sentences, but that
> > opinion wasn't backed up by any scientific evidence. Now, a team of
> > Australian psychologists has come a step closer to proving that mobile
> > phones are destroying our ability to think. The researchers show that
> > children who use mobile phones respond to higher-level cognitive tasks
> > faster, but less accurately, than those who don't.
>
> I expect it will even out in the long run - as we become stupider (and
> don't we, with every generation?), we won't have the capacity to
> continue making machines smart enough to take up the slack, and the
> pendulum will swing back, right?
>
> Or not, and the machines will take over. Wait, I saw that movie....
>
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