Study: Facebook Makes You Smarter While Twitter & YouTube Dumb You Down

Keeping up to date on Facebook seems to have the same positive effect on your brain as playing complex video games and solving Sudoku puzzles, according to Dr Tracy Alloway and a new study. But text messaging, using Twitter' and watching YouTube were all likely to weaken your ''working memory''.

Working memory is the ability to remember information and actually use it. 

"On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,'' said Dr Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. ''Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.''