The internet and your brain

Have many Facebook friends do you have? 


While you're reading, have a chill to Ben Howard -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzzCthKw_C0


Professor Geraint Rees, UCL , led the study which investigated the correlation of 125 university student's number of friends on Facebook with the size of parts of their brains.


The number of Facebook friends were counted for each student, then a scan of their brain was taken. The peculiar thing is, there is no direct correlation between the size of brain and the number of real life friends. This could hint that the factor on the brain size is not the number of friends, but perhaps time spent on the internet.


However, it is not just the internet which could affect brain size, as the sample group was quite bias, being university students, the study is restricted to that age group, and also not taking into account the brain sizes of teenagers not in study.


The bigger picture


Indeed perhaps going online is having an effect on our brains, but as the internet has only been available for a number of years, who knows what the effect could be in another 20 years? Or even 100 years? The internet is a growing feature in our lives and it allows us to connect to one another all over the planet. We must accept that our brains have to pay the price, positively or negatively.