Kristyna Pavlickova
WR 098
Professor Finlayson
04/05/2012

Is internet really making us better off? Comparing Diana Schaub’s “Unfriending Friendship” and Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nowadays it can be considered a general fact that the internet helps people in various ways, not only at work, but also in their personal lives. Most people see the internet and social networks as an enormous asset to their everyday life. However, according to Diana Schaub in her essay, “Unfriending friendship,” and Nicholas Carr in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” the internet and social media also causes negative effects on our everyday life. Even though these two essays, both written around the year 2010, have different topics and there are certainly differences in the authors’ writing styles, they still have some similarities. These two essays share a similar theme: that the internet and social media diminish our human capabilities to think and make friends. Some differences occur in how Carr and Schaub approach their readers’, one author uses personal examples and the other shows differences in word meanings. In Carr’s article, he includes his own examples to show readers how the internet has changed his capability of reading longer texts; now his attention span has greatly decreased because he is used to short style of text on the internet. At the beginning of Carr’s essay there is a short part of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddyssey which Carr uses to show readers how far we have come with technology. Carr not only uses his own example of how technology changed him (for example, he is impatient and craves information instantaneously) but also shows how technology changed Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing style when he started using a typewriter in 1882. One of Nietzche’s friends realized how his writing changed: “His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic.” However, Schaub uses a different strategy; she does not use personal examples as Carr does but explains the differences between the phrase “to friend” and the older phrase “to befriend”. She argues that the new word “to friend” might have lost some of the real values conveyed with “to befriend.” She shows the Oxford English Dictionary explanation of the word “to befriend” from 1559: “you may befriend my wretched soule with quicke dispatch in death.” The word “befriend” is a serious matter; in this sense, friendship is related to the soul and is not transient but permanent, lasting until death. However, presently “to friend” means to meet someone a few times. Even though Carr and Schaub utilize different writing styles to exemplify how technology, and especially the internet, influences friendship and reading habits, they both attract the reader and explain their thoughts accurately. Both essays were published around the year 2010; to be exact, Schaub’s “Unfriending friendship” was published in 2010 and Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in 2008. This topic is very logical since the internet, and especially social media, became increasingly popular in the early 2000s. In 2000, only 17% of the world’s population had access to the internet (published by Nielson online) and Facebook did not exist, compared to 2010 statistics that 33% of population is able to connect to the internet (published by Nielson online) and 12% of the population has a Facebook account (according to Facebook data). Researchers have hypothesized that social media has negative effects, such as negative effect on the health of children (according to research children overusing social media and internet are more likely to have a psychological disorder in the future) or negative influence on learning (research has shown that students checking their Facebook during studying have achieved lower grades). With internet on the rise and the vast number of potential consequences, Schaub’s and Carr’s articles have become particularly important. It is important to think about the social side effects of online obsessions and friendship. Carr’s essay goes in depth as to how much using internet, in particular Google, changes our lives every day. Using his own example, Carr demonstrates his inability to concentrate and read longer texts. He argues that Google may be the reason for this problem. However Carr aslo clearly sees the benefits of internet. For example, he states that “research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.” Yet he also understands the darker side of this new technology and explains that because information is so easily accessible, our brains get used to receiving information in just a couple seconds after clicking a few Google links. As a result, it is becoming very difficult for people to concentrate while searching for information in longer texts. In like manner, Schaub’s essay elaborates on differences between “the real friendship” and “the Facebook friendship.” According to Schaub, virtual friends are “fast friends in manner of fast food: quick, cheap and possibly unhealthy.” Since people “add” people from different social circles such as a neighbor or colleague from work to their “friends list on Facebook,” it is still questionable if these people are meaningful friends. Schaub argues that friendship is moving toward a different direction where you can call almost everyone a “friend”, as long as you are friends on Facebook. Both of the essays discuss the same theme of whether or not the internet is helping us move forward or holding us back when trying to find the real values in life and friendship.
A few days ago, Google introduced its newest invention - virtual glasses. In a couple of years people are probably going to be walking with these glasses on that will notify them every time a “friend” is somewhere close to them or when someone poked them on Facebook; no one will have to look at their smartphones anymore. The question is how much further technology can possibly go. Google’s main goal is to provide everyone with the exact answer that they are looking for as quickly as possible. Hopefully there is a future way in which people will be able to use internet to not only obtain more information, but also to broaden their thinking. Only time will show if this technology which allows people to know everything instantly will help society or if this will make people lazier and less willing to actually search for knowledge. Personally I think that people will realize the real values of knowledge and will use the internet and social media for broadening their real knowledge and real friendship.

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Work cited
Schaub, Diana. “Unfriending Friendship” Stanford University.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic Magazine July/Aug. 2008.