Our brains—or worse, children's brains—could be rewired from the fast pace of modern social networking sites, TV shows, and video games, says Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. The researcher said this week that kids seem to have more trouble understanding each other (in real life, that is) and focusing in school, and that it could be due to the proliferation of short, bite-sized clips of information in the online world that is causing their brains to physically change.

Greenfield said that sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Twitter may be forcing kids' brains back into an infant-like state, as infants need constant stimulation to remind them that they exist. She added that she worries that "real" conversation will eventually give way to these little snippets of text dialogue, indicating that our normal language might eventually turn into pokes, wall shout-outs, and 140-character snark fests. (Ars Technica)