If you were on Twitter yesterday, you probably came across an article about how Twitter makes you stupid. The article, called Twitter Turns You Into a Twit but Facebook Makes you Clever, Says Expert, was passed around Twitter all day yesterday, along with no small amount of derision. The thing is – it’s a whole load of bulltwit, and the doctor behind the inflammatory statement isn’t exactly the most credible source.

It all boils down to Baddeley’s model of “working memory,” a theoretical model of human memory that’s actually received a fair amount of criticism since it was proposed in 1974. The “expert” cited in the Daily Record article is Dr. Tracy Alloway, who specializes in working memory. She claims that Facebook is good for your brain, because it requires humans to use more memory.

The first problem with this article is that it’s 100% opinion, passed off as if it’s fact. For example, the article states “Scientists say working memory – remembering things and using information – is the real foundation of learning, not IQ.” The problem is, lots of scientists say the exact opposite. The article makes it sound as though all of this is in agreement, when in fact, it’s still constantly under debate in the scientific world.

The second problem with this article is that, once again, it’s written by a person who clearly hasn’t used Twitter very much and doesn’t particularly understand how it works. Dr. Halloway claims that Facebook requires you to use more of your memory than Facebook, and that Twitter’s constant stream of information doesn’t give users the opportunity to absorb or manipulate information. But that’s not how Twitter works. People don’t just stare at a constant stream of data. They stop, they review, they process, and they remember. I follow over nine hundred people, three of whom I actually know in real life. Yet when I see their avatars pop up in my feed, I think and remember things about each of these people – what their interests are, what the tone and attitude of their tweets is, whether or not they’ve given me a #followfriday recommendation in the last week or not.

Furthermore, Halloway’s own website, tracyalloway.com, violates the very tenets she lays out in the article. Her Wordpress installation flashes a new article excerpt every ten seconds, giving users absolutely no opportunity to actually read any of them, let alone to process anything. It’s worse than Twitter, because there’s no way to stop the articles from shifting. If Halloway really believed what she says about taking time to "process and manipulate information," she would change her website to give users a chance to actually read an article before shifting to another one, or just drop the shifting thing altogether – it’s bad design.

The third problem is that the article is clearly nothing more than an attempt by Dr. Halloway to promote herself, at the expense of the general public’s understanding of what Twitter is and how it works – just the latest in a series of Twitter-bashing articles that take advantage of the fact that the majority of people still don’t understand what the world’s largest microblogging platform represents.

If you’re trying to decide between using Facebook or using Twitter, don’t bother. Get onto both – they’re completely different concepts in social media, and they each have their own benefits and pitfalls. Don’t bother turning to “experts” who clearly don’t know much about the social networks they’re describing – do your own research. Since I started using Twitter, I’ve noticed a dramatic improvement in my memory – what about you?