“I cannot finish my homework; I just end up creeping on Facebook!” My roommate, Rachel, slamming her computer shut and headed towards the kitchen to find a snack that could continue killing time, instead of finishing her last bit of homework. As college students we spend a huge amount of our time sitting in front of our laptops working on school work. We are expected to use the internet to research, read, and learn on our own time. Spending all this time in front of the internet opens many opportunities to be able to learn and grow, but also opens many temptations to ‘surf the web’ and get side-tracked. 74% of Americans use the internet on a frequent basis, which makes up about 13% of the users worldwide. Many of Americans might not be able to make it through their normal day without that internet. Does this mean that as a society that the internet is making a noticeable impact in our lives? The internet came about so quickly and is still considered somewhat new to society. In Nicholas Carr’s (2008) article, Is Google Making Us Stupid he said, “For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded.” This statement is correct in the sense that the internet is full of a lot of useful information that can help us learn and be put to good use. However, the internet may also often be used as an avid time waster, rather than a tool to help us gain knowledge.
Using the internet in our everyday lives for work, school, and connection can be a tricky task to complete without getting side tracked. Using to internet for useful reasons requires a good amount of self-control, time management, and focus. Steven Pinker (2010) compared people’s use of the internet to the book, You Are What You Eat. The statement ‘You Are What You Eat’ deals with the fact that people who eat terrible, in return, look terrible, those who choose to eat healthy have a healthy looking body and lifestyle. The comparable idea that one’s internet use reflects who they are, demonstrates how one who spends their time using twitter might have thoughts reflecting quick status or bullet ideas’ one who spends their time watching violent movie or games may shows signs of acting in violent matter. People are spending more time on the internet now than in actual face-to-face contact with people. We are constantly emailing instead of calling on the telephone, keeping up on Facebook instead of meeting up in person, and couples are spending their evening playing games on their phones or computer instead of spending time together.
The internet has helped us to keep things short and simple. We now don’t have to watch full news stories because later that night there will be a short clip with key points, and we can find big news stories through others tweets and status updates. One might think this is great because we can save time while still getting the same information, while others can see this as a curse because we are spending less time educating our own selves. Nicholas Carr brings up the point that it is becoming more and more difficult for us to take the time and focus long enough to sit and read an entire article, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” The more reading we do on the web, the less work we have to do in researching ideas. This causes us to not have to think nearly as much as we would if we were reading out of a textbook; all of the ideas are linked to each other, less than a click away. The internet, in a way, changes the way we think and read. It has started to skew how we perceive things and what we get out of what we are reading. Carr quoted Maryanne Wolf, a scholar and author who studies the origins of reading and language-learning, who reminds us that when we are growing up speech is an instinctive skill that we are born with but, we all must gain the intelligence it takes to read. We have to continually be furthering our knowledge and training our minds to recognize and translate what it is that we are reading. When we are reading bullet pointed ideas rather than articles, we are not fully developing that particular part of our brain, this is slowly changing how we read and learn things.
One main focus and benefit of the internet is the research it allows us to get done. Rather than going to a library and searching through multiple books to find our information, all we have to do is simply type in our topic and we will be directed to multiple websites and articles revolving around our topic. As college students we are required to do research on a daily basis, Pinker (2008) states that, “It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, through research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate.” Deep reflection and research isn’t something that comes easily but it is something that the internet has made more available to us. We attend universities to gain this knowledge he talks about here, but the internet can be used as an aid in helping us learn more and extend our knowledge in specific subjects. The web can help us to manage our thoughts, gain insights, and retrieve specific information pertaining to a study.
President David A. Bednar gave a talk in 2010 titled Learning to Love Learning, in this talk we learn how truly important learning for ourselves is in this lifetime. When one looks at seeking a greater knowledge, we have to realize that knowledge is our greatest possession; it is all we take with us when we return to our Heavenly Father. Our Father in Heaven has created this brilliant universe with infinite opportunities to learn and increase our understanding and knowledge. When we are using tools in the right sense for the right reasons they can be a good thing for us. The internet may be full information that is unnecessary for us to know, but used in the right manner, it is also full of great resources and information to help us learn and grow. David McCullough’s (2008) article, The Love of Learning states, “Information is useful. Information is often highly interesting. Information has value, sometimes great value. The right bit of information at the opportune moment can be worth a fortune. Information can save time and effort. Information can save your life. The value of information, facts, figures, and the like, depends on what we make of it- on judgments.” We find all kinds of information through the internet, it is more so what we do with the information we find. We can choose to fill our brains with information that is useless to us and will take up space, or we can choose to use the internet to find information that we can value to help us grow and learn that much more.
As a society, we don’t always make the right choices or best judgment. This is something that is relative to each individual person. The internet opens many doors to us, as well as many opportunities to learn, but that doesn’t always mean we take those opportunities and use them to their fullest. Using the web has definitely changed the way live our lives, we have become a much more ‘quick moving’ society and maybe even more distracted but, we also have a new world opened to us that can be a huge benefit if used correctly. It takes wicked amounts of self control and boundaries to use the web in a useful way. If we are engaged in finding new knowledge and opening our horizons of research, it can be a great blessing to us. As in all good things, we must limit our use. If we are not overloading our time spent on the internet it will not become a negative vibe in our life. The web is increasingly becoming a great way to help us to learn and find research if we have the right mind set and intentions of learning and furthering our knowledge. We should not be limiting our research and time to only the internet, but also not viewing it as a bad aspect in our life. “Make the love of learning central to your life.” Use the internet for the good it has to offer and restrain yourself from the bad it can bring. Sure, the internet has had a big impact on society over the past few years but that impact can be looked at and used as a blessing rather that a nuisance.