Has the Internet Made Us Dumber? Essay Example

Introduction

The explosion of what was initially a military connection to the civilian Internet not only transformed the world technologically but also made it an integral part of human life. One of the benefits the Internet brought was easy access to volumes of information that was initially cumbersome to come by. We currently use the internet to communicate and network, find directions, do research, keep in touch with the happenings across the world as well as entertain ourselves. Kaufman underpins that the Internet revolution is reshaping how humans live and do business, with enhanced ability to achieve a lot over distance sometimes from the comfort of their homes.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

That said, there are growing concerns that the more we continue to rely on the Internet, the more our brains move into a comfort zone of intellectual laziness. As online content continues to explode and gadgets that can bring the information to the palms of our hands, the paradox is that this development is doing little to our thinking capacities. Against the backdrop of a host of benefits, apps that enhance human life, better gadgets, and faster connectivity, this paper is of the school of thought that the Internet has made us dumber.

Facts, Statistics, and Opinions

According to Chamorro-Premuzic, humans possess fluid and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is responsible for acquiring and processing information, which means that the highest level allows an individual to multitask and effortlessly handle complex assignments. Crystalized intelligence, on the other hand, is knowledge stored in our minds. This has been replaced by our ability to outsource the same on the Internet while starving our internal storage of the same information. In essence, our minds are being wired to be on the lookout for the next available point of connection to the Internet for outsourcing solutions to our problems.

During the pre-internet era, people took the initiative to memorize things, for instance, countries and their presidents or capital cities. The advantage was that once an individual's mind absorbed a concept or piece of information, it was difficult for one to forget despite the passage of time. That Google can now answer that question at the click of a button means that many have not only stopped training their minds to capture information but also failed to add information to their memory banks. The undoing is that the Internet gives people a sense of superficial smartness while in essence, they cannot handle some minor issues unaided. This digital amnesia is called the Google Effect.

Furthermore, web browsing has become the preferred method of sourcing for information as compared to reading books. Studies have shown that attention spans reduce when we rely on a search engine to look for facts instead of our memories (Sehgal). The findings indicate that an individual comprehends more by reading a book compared to accessing the same information through hypertext (Miall, and Dobson). It hinges on the fact that reading a book is not stimulating, which forces the brain to transfer data to the long-term memory. That the current generation mostly learns online means they would not recall much in an environment that has no access to the Internet.

While it is true that the Internet makes a lot of information available, social media providers collect information about individuals online to use in advertising. The result is that they try to discourage attentive reading by placing distractions like pop up ads (Bennet). The economic interest has also brought about the clickbait phenomenon, where users are encouraged to click certain links with the promise of more gratifying information. It, therefore, makes it difficult even for a genuine researcher to concentrate on one source without a distraction or temptation to wander around.

Additionally, remembering is psychologically said to be a social enterprise where one individual knows one thing as the other does a different one (Wegner, and Ward). Consciously or subconsciously, we distribute the mental responsibility of understanding concepts among members of our social groups, recalling some and expecting others to remember the rest. By so doing, members access deeper and broader knowledge compared to what can be stored individually, off-loading responsibility for specific bits of information to others while freeing up our cognitive abilities to increase our depth of education for our allocated areas. With the Internet however, many people tend to prefer an online search instead of consulting a friend or partner, removing the essence of group knowledge.

Further afield, individuals in the past somehow managed to get lost until they found their navigation. It was either by listening to directions keenly or looking at a physical map and relating it to the world around before choosing the route to follow. Thanks to Google Maps many are not only unable to make sense of simple maps but also estimate the distance between two locations by looking at a physical map. The truth is that in most instances technology works and goes a long way in directing people to their destinations. However, many are left in frustration and limbo on occasions when the internet connection has downtime or lose touch with the navigation satellite.

Solutions

It is a no-brainer that technology continues to evolve, which means a continued increase in the gap between what humans can solve on their own and when the Internet suffices. On the Google Effect, Roberts advises on the need to spend moments offline to allow the mind time to pay attention to the world around, experience happenings and restructure to commit information to the long-term memory. She expounds that the best way to make our minds keep information is always to sit back and refresh the day's experiences instead of viewing the internet as an extension of our memory. Institutions of learning should replicate the same by teaching students how to think innovatively and eclectically.

Bennet proposes that to counter clickbait, social media providers should curate search results and come up with different editorial obligations to allow online users not only concentrate but also access balanced information devoid of commercial bias. Online content producers should be controlled to steer away from information meant to attract traction and garner clicks. There is also need to find ways of monetizing factual content so that it is profitable enough to displace clickbait content. Users on their end should develop plugins that can fact-check and filter unnecessary information and advertisements.

Conclusion

With the benefit of hindsight, the Internet has instilled intellectual laziness in people and replaced it with overreliance on gadgets. That thinking is abdicated to search engines means that the part of the human brain which is wired to think through problems and find solutions does little, making people dumb. Whereas it is true that the Internet is a reservoir of loads of important information, it has replaced the need for humans to navigate through problems and think critically unaided.

Works Cited

Bennett, Richard. "The Internet Is Making Us Stupid." High Tech Forum, 2016, http://hightechforum.org/the-internet-is-making-us-stupid/. Accessed 5 Nov 2018.

Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. "Is Technology Making Us Stupid (And Smarter)?". Psychology Today, 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mr-personality/201305/is-technology-making-us-stupid-and-smarter. Accessed 5 Nov 2018.

Kaufman, Micha. "The Internet Revolution is the New Industrial Revolution." Forbes, 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michakaufman/2012/10/05/the-internet-revolution-is-the-new-industrial-revolution/. Accessed 5 Nov 2018.

Miall, David, and Teresa Dobson. "Reading Hypertext and The Experience of Literature". Journal of Digital Information, 2001, https://journals.tdl.org/jodi/index.php/jodi/article/view/35/37. Accessed 5 Nov 2018.

Sehgal, Kabir. "The Internet Makes Us Stupid and Here's Why." Fortune, 2016, http://fortune.com/2016/02/03/nicholas-carr-internet/. Accessed 5 Nov 2018.

Wegner, Daniel M., and Adrian F. Ward. "The Internet Has Become the External Hard Drive for Our Memories." Scientific American, 2013, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-internet-has-become-the-external-hard-drive-for-our-memories/. Accessed 5 Nov 2018.