Porn and video games: more hysteria about ‘rewiring brains’

Here we go again. What effect do you think watching porn and video games have on young men? Yup, they rewire the brain.

It’s such a clumsy metaphor – the brain isn’t ‘wired’ in any meaningful sense – that you’d think psychologists and neuroscientists would run a mile from it. Unless, of course they’re Baroness Greenfield, who is a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. She was director of the Royal Institution until her post was abolished in 2010, ‘amid claims that there was almost no other way to get rid of her’ (thank you, Wikipedia).

Susan Greenfield’s evidence-light claims about the neurological dangers of digital technology have exposed her to much mockery in the scientific community – I recommend this Guardian article that offers a ‘handy guide to writing your own Susan Greenfield article that will be indistinguishable from the real thing’.