Facebook, My Space, Bebo, You Tube and computer games could be making us fat warns scientists.

Brain training

Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, said constant computer use could be infantilising the brain, making it harder to learn when things go wrong.

When a child falls out of a tree or burns their hand on a hot surface they learn not to repeat the same mistakes. Yet since the dawn of the computer age people, particularly young people, time and time again repeat the same mistakes in the virtual world, which could infantilise the brain. Computer use could be cutting attention spans, stifling imagination and hampering empathy, she said. As a direct consequence, the parts of the brain involved in these traits will not develop properly and the brain is held in a young child-like state.

Immediate gratification

In computer games the need for immediate gratification is so desirable that these same feelings are spilling over to the eating habits of computer gamers and social networkers, resulting in too much eating, too much eating the wrong things - without any thought of the medium and long term consequences.

Use it or lose it

The development of a highly sophisticated region of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex are of particular concern. Research into brain development show that if the pre-frontal cortex is damaged, making it less active, people take more risks and become more reckless and it could be said that this attitute is spilling over into the eating habits of regular gamers and computer users.

Another view

It could also be argued that gamers and computer users that are inactive yet snack regularly also contribute to the expanding waistbands observed. Most gamers and people who use computers for the most part of their day are often reluctant to leave their work station and so the tempation to snack is vife - leading to weight gain and poor eating habits.