Is social media impairing our ability to recognize faces?

There is a growing awareness of prosopagnosia - the inability to recognize faces - in China. Photo: Li Hao/GT

Whenever her colleagues wear new outfits to work or change their hairstyles, 30-year-old Beijing-based human resources manager Landseer Tao has trouble recognizing them. Unlike most people, the way she distinguishes one person from another is not by looking at their faces, but by concentrating on other traits in their appearance.

"A person's face will overlap with another's in my mind," said Tao.

"Generally, I identify people by their body shapes and hairstyles. I can recognize people who I know really well, but it still takes me a while."

Tao never thought it abnormal until a friend told her about prosopagnosia, or "face blindness" - a cognitive disorder in which a person's ability to recognize faces is impaired. The disorder has gotten more and more attention in the Chinese media in recent years, with large numbers of people in China suspecting that they might suffer from it.

While the causes of prosopagnosia have traditionally been attributed to acute brain damage or hereditary defect, some are now suggesting that the use of social media in our everyday lives may contribute to the deteriorating ability to recognize faces.

According to a paper in the Journal of Neuropsychology published in 2008, it has generally been believed that prosopagnosia affects around 2.5 percent of the population. But a more recent study, led by professor David Skuse at University College of London, found that up to a third of people may have an impaired ability to recognize faces, based on the identification of a gene that plays an important part in our being able to distinguish one face from another.