Anyone born in the 21st Century, grew up with the internet. They hear stories from their parents and grandparents about the good old days. I don’t know how many times I have heard the line “I never had Facebook or Twitter when I was your age” at family dinners. As a technology that has been rooted into our culture, we need to ask ourselves: how is this technology effecting us? In his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr tackled this very question. Carr has a very different answer than I do. Nicholas Carr will attempt to teach you to be skeptical of the internet’s potentially negative effects on your mind. Carr has taken the easier route of criticizing a relatively new technology without offering any alternative suggestions or …show more content…
He believes the internet has caused a change in reading habits. Carr argues that humans are more likely to skim through a piece of literature instead of sitting down and reading a 1000 page epic because of the internet. While I completely agree with Carr’s cultural habit analysis, I disagree with his criticism that this was a skill created by the internet. Every non-fiction book I can think of contains an index. Do I read the whole book to find a specific sentence of information? No. In Christopher Marlowe’s 1593 poem “Hero and Leander”, he writes “Therefore, even as an index to a book / So to his mind was young Leander's look.” If we have been using indexes to quickly find key pieces of information for the last 400+ years, how can Carr pretend that the internet is responsible for this habit of skimming? As long as a student has the will power to find a particular quote, he/she will find …show more content…
Again, Carr took the relatively easy way out and lacked the ability to conduct a search for actual scientific research. Luckily, I did just that. In 2009, UCLA conducted a study that proved using the internet can improve cognitive functions and brain power. By monitoring first time users of the internet, between the ages of 55 and 70, the UCLA scientists discovered that by using the internet the subjects were exercising specific parts of their brains. This study as well as others that UCLA conducted, pointed towards the possibility that it is what we use the internet for that decides if the internet is effective for our brains or not. Just like any other tool, it is the task, the person, and direction that decides if the outcome is positive or