Is the Internet Ruining Our Minds?

[Uzumaki42]

Sourced from Yahoo! News:

Book asks: Is Internet ruining our minds?

By Mark Egan

NEW YORK - When author Nicholas Carr began researching his book on whether the Internet is ruining our minds, he restricted his online access and e-mail and turned off his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

His new book "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" argues the latest technology renders us less capable of deep thinking. Carr found himself so distracted that he couldn't work on the book while staying as connected, as is commonplace.

"I found my inability to concentrate a great disability," Carr told Reuters in an interview.

"So, I abandoned my Facebook and Twitter accounts and throttled back on e-mail so I was only checking a couple of times a day rather than every 45 seconds. I found those types of things really did make a difference," he said.

After initially feeling "befuddled" by his sudden lack of online connection, Carr said, within a couple of weeks he was able to stay focused on one task for a sustained period and, thankfully, able to do his work.

Carr wrote a 2008 Atlantic magazine piece that posed the controversial question "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and wanted to dig deeper into how the Internet alters our minds.

His book examines the history of reading and the science of how using different media changes our brains. Exploring how society shifted from an oral tradition to the printed word and to the Internet, he details how the brain rewires itself to adjust to new information sources.

Reading on the Internet has fundamentally changed how we use our brains, he writes.

Facing a torrent of text, photos, video, music and links to other web pages combined with incessant interruptions from text messages, e-mails, Facebook updates, Tweets, blogs and RSS feeds, our minds have become used to skimming, browsing and scanning information.

As a result, we have developed sharper skills at making fast decisions, particularly visual ones, Carr says.

But now most of us infrequently read books, long essays or articles that would help us focus, concentrate and be introspective and contemplative, Carr writes.

ARE WE LIBRARIANS?

He says we are becoming more like librarians -- able to find information quickly and discern the best nuggets -- than scholars who digest and interpret information.

That lack of focus hinders our long-term memory, leading many of us to feel distracted, he said.

"We never engage the deeper, interpretive functions of our brains," he said.

To illustrate, he likens short-term memory to a thimble and long-term memory to a large bathtub. Reading a book is like filling the tub with water from one steadily flowing faucet with each thimble of information building upon the last.

By contrast, the Internet is countless fast-flowing faucets, leaving us grasping for thimbles of disparate information to put in the tub and making it harder for our brains to draw connections and have cogent recall.

"What we are losing is a whole other set of mental skills, the ones that require not the shifting of our focus but the maintaining of our focus," Carr said.

"Contemplation, introspection, reflection -- there is no space or time for those on the Internet."

Carr says for centuries books shielded our brains from distraction, focusing our minds on one topic at a time.

But with devices such as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad, which incorporate eReaders and web browsers, becoming commonplace, Carr predicts books too will change.

"New forms of reading always require new forms of writing," he said.

If writers cater to a society that is chronically distracted, they will inevitably eschew writing complex arguments that require sustained attention and instead write in pithy, bite-sized bits of information, Carr predicts.

Carr has a suggestion for those who feel web surfing has left them incapable of concentration -- slow down, turn off the Internet and practice the skills of contemplation, introspection and reflection.

"It is pretty clear from the brain science that if you don't exercise particular cognitive skills, you are going to lose them," he said. "If you are constantly distracted, you are not going to think in the same way that you would think if you paid attention."

While I think this holds true to me, I'd like to know what you people think. Does the Internet really ruin our minds? Or, if properly used, can it expand our minds?
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[ladyunicornejg]

Personally, i dont' think the internet is ruining our minds. I find I can learn a great many things on the internet and it can be very productive. Just like anything else, however, becoming too obsessive about the internet - or worse trying to be extremely involved in too many things with no breaks - can be a problem. The real key is finding balance in things...

Though I'm one to talk there - I neglected my online stuff for obsessively playing a couple video games. Sure, some people may become obessve about the internet and be much better without it (or with it restricted), but many of the people who have their life "ruined" by the internet (or anything else) would have it ruined even if there was no internet (or whatever specific thing ruined it) - they'd just wind up finding something else to cause similar problems.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Uzumaki42]

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(06-15-2010 08:41 AM)ladyunicornejg Wrote:  Personally, i dont' think the internet is ruining our minds. I find I can learn a great many things on the internet and it can be very productive. Just like anything else, however, becoming too obsessive about the internet - or worse trying to be extremely involved in too many things with no breaks - can be a problem. The real key is finding balance in things...

Though I'm one to talk there - I neglected my online stuff for obsessively playing a couple video games. Sure, some people may become obessve about the internet and be much better without it (or with it restricted), but many of the people who have their life "ruined" by the internet (or anything else) would have it ruined even if there was no internet (or whatever specific thing ruined it) - they'd just wind up finding something else to cause similar problems.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

The reason i think so is because there is many people (like myself) that choose to be lazy and do everything on the computer. Like school projects for exapmle. And my vocabulary is shrinking because Im accidently using computer short words. Most people in my class are.
But I love the Internet xD

[ladyunicornejg]

Ah, but that's your personal choice. I have been on computers for longer than I can remember. I renamed files in DOS at two years old. I have been a webmaster of multiple (very small) sites off and on for years, and mod/admin on more than that. I nearly exclusively communicate via instant messenger and email, as I'm too far out to talk to many people in person and do not cope well with phones. Despite all of this, I primarily use full words and proper grammar.

At the same time, I do agree that without the internet and text messaging that particular "vocabulary" issue would not exist in the same sense. There would still be people without a good vocabulary, as laziness would still exist as would certain types of words people manage to use far more than they should. So on this particular piece, I'm not sure what to say.

What I am sure I can say is that you can find problems with anything that exists. The internet can ruin someone's life, but so can anything else if taken too far. Even a book can ruin someone's life - they can become so obsessed with it that they lose touch with reality, for example. In that same sense, it's quite possible that someone's life could be ruined by a tree or a dog or a cat or a certain food. Even if those things did ruin many people's lives, would we place the blame on them? Did people once ask the question "are house pets ruining our lives?" or "is gardening ruining our lives?" I have to wonder...

So here's my opinion on that... the internet isn't ruining people's lives, their choices of how to use the internet are ruining lives. Laziness is also ruining lives.

P.S. Sorry about the rant lol

[Uzumaki42]

Lol you made me feel bad about my life xD

[ladyunicornejg]

lol I'm sorry.