Across the world, renowned scientists, authors, and literary critics are raising awareness about the potential damaging influence of the Internet on intelligence. In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts expresses his belief that our educational systems are in decline as students are less proficient at reading and comprehending texts, and test scores are falling at an alarming rate. He sees language erosion, the flattening of historical perspectives, and the waning of the private self as issues related to the use of technology. Language erosion results from fewer students reading books, while the flattening of historical perspective results from students viewing the past from only one perspective and as irrelevant to the future. In addition, the connectedness of the Net contributes to “electronic collectivization,” which Birkerts believes has fueled the loss of the individuated self and autonomy among young people (Birkerts). Similarly, Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard University, feels that the lives and minds of young people are becoming fragmented given the plethora of connections, networks, and messages. Their identities are less stable because “times for reflection, introspection, solitude are scarce” (Brockman 276). Like Birkerts and Gardner, Haim Harari, an Israeli theoretical physicist, is concerned with the harmful impact of the Internet on intelligence and he points to two significant changes. First, messages have become terse due to social networking, texting and e-mail. Second, the role of factual knowledge in the thinking process has diminished as the Internet enables users to access facts quickly through sites such as Wikipedia and Google. As human reliance on technology and the Internet increases, it has been hypothesized that there is a negative effect on human intelligence. This hypothesis is supported by the research of Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, as well as data released from scientific studies and national surveys.
In The Dumbest Generation, Bauerlein discusses the destructive impact of the digital age on Generation Y, specifically in creating young Americans who are disinterested and cut off from the realities of our world. As students spend countless hours on sites such as Facebook, which like other social networking sites has little educational value, their level of intelligence does not increase because “the web is a consumer habitat, not an educational one” (Bauerlein 149). As a result, they lack knowledge in history, civics, math, science, and the fine arts. The statistics do not lie. In 2004, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the percentage of seventeen-year-olds who “never or hardly ever” read for enjoyment had more than doubled from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004 (Department of Education, United States). The more a person chooses not to read, the more a person is unable to read and the intellectual development of the young mind stalls. Also, research has supported that children who grow up in homes with numerous books ultimately receive three years more schooling than children from bookless homes. This study, in which parents’ education, occupation, and socioeconomic class were held constant, suggests that the presence of books in homes has significant educational benefits (Kelley et al.). In addition, the Chronicle of Higher Education released data from a 2006 survey of college professors, which found that only 6 percent of the professors surveyed believed that entering students were “very well prepared in writing” (Chronicle of Higher Education). It is evident that changes in technology have led to new patterns of thinking, especially with respect to reading and writing, among young people.
How is the Internet specifically responsible for the degradation of student writing and the decline in student reading? When writing a paper, students frequently turn immediately to the Internet to search for existing information rather than pursue new ideas using their imagination. Thus, the Net satisfies immediate needs at the expense of deeper thinking and understanding. Also, the creation of Microsoft Word and spell-check prevent the improvement of a student’s writing skills. A post on the USA Today blog, “Generation Next,” noted that young people today suffer from “e-literacy” as “we can’t spell and we don’t know synonyms because there’s less need to know. What smart person would devote hours to learning words that can be accessed at the click of a button? Spell-check can spell. Shift +F7 produces synonyms” (Bauerlein 66). Thus, people's writing and thinking skills are deteriorating as their reliance on spell-check and the Internet grows exponentially. In addition to studies related to reading and writing, the theories of well-known critics and authors, as well as scientific research studies, have shown that the Internet has affected the neurological pathways of the human brain.
In 2007, Gary Small, a UCLA professor of psychiatry, conducted a study with 24 volunteers to research the effect of Internet searching on brain activity. Half the participants had used the Internet daily, while the other half had little experience with this technology. At the outset of the study, all participants performed Internet searches while undergoing fMRI scans which recorded changes in brain activity. After the initial scan, the participants spent one hour a day for seven days over a two-week period on the Internet. Then, the participants received a second scan and the fMRI results indicated activation in new brain regions for the inexperienced participants, specifically regions related to working memory and decision-making. After a brief period of time, the inexperienced participants’ brains were rewired as they demonstrated activation patterns similar to those who had previously used the Internet daily (Champeau). These results show how quickly and extensively the Net is able to restructure people’s neural pathways. Small concluded that, “the current explosion of digital technology is not only changing the way we live and communicate, but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains” (Small). However, as the Internet leads to extensive brain activity, humans may be subject to cognitive overload. The psychological term cognitive load refers to the information flowing into a person’s working memory. If the information load exceeds the brain’s ability to process and store it, the information will not be retained or be connected to other memories. Extensive brain activity may lead to cognitive overload, which prevents humans from converting new information into conceptual knowledge (Carr). In 2005, psychologists at Carelton University in Canada found that “the increased demands of decision-making and visual processing in the hypertext impaired reading performance…many features of the hypertext resulted in increased cognitive load” (DeStefano & LeFevre). Scientific studies also reveal additional effects, both positive and negative, that Internet use is having on human intellect.
In contrast to those critics who argue that the Internet negatively influences human cognition, technophiles Ray Kurzweil and Nicholas Negroponte believe that the Internet is enhancing, not degrading, human intelligence. A research study at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies found that Internet use helps humans to develop “fluid intelligence – the ability to find meaning in confusion and solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge” (Anderson). This research study supports the idea that the Internet and its resources can shift cognitive capacities. Humans will not have to memorize as much information, so more time will be available to improve critical thinking and analytical skills. In addition, Ray Kurzweil, an American author, inventor, and futurist, believes that machines will attain human-level intelligence and humans will become transhumanists, incorporating more technology to become smarter. Similarly, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab and the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC) supports the use of technology. Negroponte, who wrote the bestselling book Being Digital, is a digital optimist and feels that the Internet will improve human life. One of OLPC’s projects was to provide computers to children in developing countries, as Negroponte believes that computers are “a window into the world and a tool with which to think (Trafton). They are a wonderful way for all children to ‘learn learning’ through independent interaction and exploration” (Trafton). As one might expect, there are arguments that technology and Internet use have the potential to improve human intelligence. However, the results of many research studies support the idea that the Internet is negatively affecting human cognition.
Studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers about the impact of the Internet on how humans think all point to the same conclusion: “when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning” (Carr 115). The Internet can serve as an interruption system, as it scatters human attention. As people use the Net, they will often glance at their email inbox to check for new messages or stop reading an article to check for Facebook updates. These breaks in a person’s concentration will burden his or her working memory, thus influencing cognition. In 2009, Patricia Greenfield, a developmental psychologist at UCLA, reviewed over 40 studies of the effects of different types of Internet media on intelligence and learning ability. These studies supported the belief that media weakens human ability for critical understanding and underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection” (Greenfield). Similarly, Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Stanford School of Public Policy recently examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th grade students in North Carolina and found that the use of home computers and Internet access was correlated to considerable declines in math and reading scores. The online world, which Cory Doctorow describes as an “ecosystem of interruption technologies,” has contributed to lower student test stores (Vigdor, Ladd). Even though the Internet allows its users instant access to immense amounts of information, it is turning them into shallow, easily distracted thinkers.
The Internet has a negative influence on the attention span and the ability of users to foster ideas. As Nicholas Carr describes, “what we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: we are evolving from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest” (Carr 135). As humans navigate the Web, every time they shift their attention their brain has to reorient itself, which strains mental resources. In particular, the Google search engine serves as a distraction to Internet users as it continues to encourage them to click as often as possible, gaining hold of their intellectual lives; “Hyperlinks are designed to grab our attention. Their value as navigational tools is inextricable from the distraction they cause” (Carr 90). It is impossible to be attentive and learn when a person is constantly bombarded by distractions as they move from site to site. As a result, the Net’s abundance of stimuli undermines human thought, which prevents the ability to think with creativity and attentiveness. In addition, users oftentimes visit too many websites and receive too many messages and ultimately feel overwhelmed by the online experience. They lack the ability to manage their time properly in the face of this plethora of information and become unfocused and less able to complete intellectually demanding tasks.
“As revolutionary as it may be, the Net is best understood as the latest in a long series of tools that have helped mold the human mind” (Carr 115). Unfortunately, the Internet has not necessarily molded the human mind in a positive way. The evidence cited in this paper confirms that for most young Internet users, members of Generation Y, “the Web hasn’t made them better readers and writers, sharper interpreters and more discerning critics, more knowledgeable citizens and tasteful consumers” (Bauerlein 110). Instead, the Internet may be the greatest enemy to deep thinking since the invention of the television. The United States needs the Millennials to become intelligent men and women who aspire to be strong and wise political and military leaders, journalists, teachers, judges, scholars, critics, and artists. The future resides in Generation Y or Generation DotNet, and it is critical that we are aware of and address the “morbid symptoms” of the Internet in this proto-electronic era.
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