Facebook and Twitter 'make us less human and isolate us' from the real world

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Communicating online with the click of a mouse is making us less human, according to top American academics.One sociologist has branded Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging as a form of 'modern madness'.Another cites the example of the death in Brighton of Simone Back who posted her suicide note on Facebook as proof of the dangers of social networking sites.

Are you talking to me? Communicating by text or on social network sites is under fire from academics in AmericaNot one of 42-year-old Simone's 1,058 'friends' on the site called for help. Instead they traded insults on her Facebook wall.In a growing backlash in the U.S. a number of books have been published condemning the cyber world for 'isolating' users from human contact.

Tragic: Simone Back, from Brighton, announced on Facebook that she was going to take an overdoseSociologist Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor, has caused a sensation with Alone Together, in which she fears technology is dominating our lives.On Stephen Colbert's TV comedy show, she revealed her shock when she went to a funeral where mourners were checking their iPhones for messages.He joked: 'We all say goodbye in our own way.'Her book, published in the UK next month, explains why Blackberries should be binned and networking sites shunned.She told The Observer: 'We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, but allowed them to diminish us.'In his bestseller The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues that the use of the internet was changing the way we think and made us less capable of taking in complicated amounts of information.Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein claimed in his book The Dumbest Generation that the 'intellectual future of the U.S.looks dim'

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While Evgeny Morozov described a generation of lazy 'slacktivists' who are under the illusion that clicking a mouse matches real world donations of money and time.
Professor William Kist,of Kent State University in Ohio, believes that rules- or a 'netiquette' - to deal with the social networking issues may need to be introduced.
But he admitted: 'The different kinds of communication people are using have become something that scares people.'Supporters of Twitter and Facebook claim social media has led to more communication for people who cannot meet friends or family because of long distances or social differences.


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