Straying from the text book to consider this: NY Times asks is Twitter creating twits?

Thoughts on slogging through my text book: I need basic skills, but this book is too basic. The chapter on using virtual worlds to teach was interesting - I like the creativity involved in creating your own avatars and settings. I still would rather have my child playing outside with other kids and making up scenarios that way, but it's a legit form of digital literacy and composition. There's a line or two that addresses concern about how much time kids spend on computers vs. how much time parents think their kids are on computers. The difference between the two was disturbing, however, like most of the points in this book, the surface was scratched but not mined in detail.

I have noticed a lot more teachers talking about how kids use technology in a negative way, and saw an opinion piece in the NY Times this a.m. that says, it's not just kids. Here's an interesting excerpt that mentions some books on the subject that might pique educators' interests:

"Evgeny Morozov, author of “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,” said Twitter creates a false intimacy and can “bring out the worst in people. You’re straining after eyeballs, not big thoughts. So you go for the shallow, funny, contrarian or cynical.”

Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” says technology amplifies everything, good instincts and base. While technology is amoral, he said, our brains may be rewired in disturbing ways.

“Researchers say that we need to be quiet and attentive if we want to tap into our deeper emotions,” he said. “If we’re constantly interrupted and distracted, we kind of short-circuit our empathy. If you dampen empathy and you encourage the immediate expression of whatever is in your mind, you get a lot of nastiness that wouldn’t have occurred before.”

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, recalled that when he started his online book review he forbade comments, wary of high-tech sociopaths.

“I’m not interested in having the sewer appear on my site,” he said. “Why would I engage with people digitally whom I would never engage with actually? Why does the technology exonerate the kind of foul expression that you would not tolerate anywhere else?”

Why indeed?