By Jill Turner

Many parents are anxious about what children are up to on the Internet. But neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University and Director of the Royal Institution in London, believes that as well as worrying about violence and online predators, we should also be concerned that children could be seriously damaging their minds.

Baroness Greenfield, made a life peer in 2001, believes that children's constant exposure to new technology, such as TV, computer games and the internet, could be behind the marked decline in their communication skills and of increased anti-social behaviour.

She believes that children are seeking refuge from pressures at home and in school in the hyper-stimulation of the cyber world, where brands are the currency of love and identity, where what you look like and what you own is more important than what you are. In this world, actions - even extremely violent ones - have no real consequences.

In her new book, ID: The Quest For Identity in the 21st Century, she asks, 'Is that really what we want them to learn?' Baroness Greenfield, 57, is particularly interested in the rise in autistic spectrum disorders, problems of relating to the outside world and communicating with others. She is concerned that time spent in 'virtual reality' can create a false vision of the world and of fellow human beings.

"Look at the monstrous behaviour of young people attacking each other and filming it and putting it on the internet," she explains. "It's remarkably callous, but it's as if they don't understand the context or the consequences of what they are doing."

She fears that, as the structure of the brain is changeable and is affected by experiences and stimuli, our children's minds may be developing in ways we might not like.

"The question of context is missing in the culture of computer games. In a book, we care about the characters and what happens to them - whereas in a computer game, although we may be rescuing the princess, we don't care about her, we just know we have to achieve the rescue.

"In a book you would learn about honour or love or other abstract human feelings and behaviour, as you followed the story, whereas a game is a means to an end in itself.

"We know already that in the early years, children cannot differentiate themselves from others or understand that others may feel or react differently from them and to them. This is something they learn as they grow. In addition, we develop the notion that actions have consequences.

"So I think we have to build in thinking time for our kids, the same way that we always have thinking time when reading a book. You can look away and assess what you have read in a way you can't with multi-media as then you are being bombarded with information all the time.

"What concerns me is that, especially for the young, real life and virtual reality gets blurred. If you look at something like Second Life, it's spookily similar to reality but not real; in the same way that pornography is similar to real life sex, although very different. Real life is much more complicated that what appears on a screen."

What she also finds interesting is that even adults are getting confused and overwhelmed by the array of information technology. "Adults never used to play games except as a means of social interaction or to keep fit. Now we have 40-year-olds sitting down at a computer in solitary confinement and rescuing princesses. I find it slightly depressing. Why aren't they reacting with other people, going for walks or having love affairs, living in a real world?

"Even the nature of friendship is changing with social networking sites. Friendship used to come from spending time with people and sharing experiences, not an instant answer from someone online sending you love."

She stresses that she is not necessarily saying this is wrong, just different.

"We haven't had the time yet to decide what we want to do with it. At the moment we are sleepwalking into all this technology and then crying 'foul' if something happens that we don't like.

"I just want to open the debate to get people to think about where we want to go with it and how it is going to change us and the way we do things - now and in future generations. Because at the moment it seems as if the tail is wagging the dog."

Baroness Greenfield will be talking about ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century (Sceptre, £16.99) on Monday at 6.30pm at the Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Parks Road, Oxford (see Bookings, right).