Digital danger: Is our online activity damaging us?

Jacob Aron, technology reporter

(Image: Nick Sinclair/Alamy)

SMARTPHONES, social networking and the internet are destroying our identities, ruining friendships and driving us all insane. At least, that is whatiDisorder by Larry Rosen and Digital Vertigo by Andrew Keen would have you believe. I'm not so sure.

Rosen, a psychologist at California State University in Dominguez Hills, argues that over-reliance on technology can cause psychological problems, the "iDisorders" of the book's title, but I struggled to find any causal link in chapter after chapter of correlations.

He describes how social networking "over-sharers" show signs of narcissism, constant phone-fiddlers might have OCD and general exposure to technology can cause ADHD. But of course, the disorders existed before these technologies, and Rosen fails to convince that their incidence is on the rise.

Digital Vertigo is equally unconvincing. Keen, whose previous book, The Cult of the Amateur, railed against user-generated content, states that privacy "is being dumped into the dustbin of history", warning that we cannot trust the likes of Facebook, Apple and Google with our precious personal data. It is a viewpoint I am entirely sympathetic with, but Keen's argument, woven between name-dropping anecdotes from Silicon Valley conferences, a potted history of privacy gaffs in 2011 and a liberal sprinkling of oft-repeated quotes from The Social Network, left me siding with the tech giants.

As Keen points out, we must all take personal responsibility for the information we put online. However, social media need not inevitably lead to Truman Show-style dystopia, as he suggests. I have found Twitter, Facebook and other online services essential for initiating and maintaining major social connections. In fact, without social networking, I would be short one wife, one job and at least half a dozen close friends.

These technologies are tools, and like all tools they must be used correctly. Cars are far more dangerous to society than Facebook; according to the World Health Organization, 1.2 million people die in road traffic accidents each year. We as a society accept this because of the benefits that cars offer, and we work to mitigate the downsides. It should be the same with smartphones and social networking. If you can't go five minutes without a status update then, yes, you should probably step away from the touchscreen, but let's not ignore the great opportunities these technologies offer for fear of some unproven and unrealised disaster.

People used to worry about the effects of the telephone on society, but 150 years on, we seem to be managing just fine.

Book Information:
iDisorder
by Larry D. Rosen
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan
?15.99/$25

Book Information:
Digital Vertigo
by Andrew Keen
Published by: Constable & Robinson/St. Martin's Press
?12.99/$25.99

dear john derrick rose torn acl pacers undrafted free agents braveheart james harden earthquake california