Is Google Making us Stupid ?
What the Internet is doing to our brains Although the Internet has only been around for the last couple ot decades, it has already become our main source of information. Furthermore it also keeps us constantly connected to friends and family and it is hard to imagine life without it anymore. However aside from all this the Internet has a dark side too: it has made us dependent. The World Wide Web has become man‘s best friend. Never has a communication technology played so many different roles in our lives. The Net has absorbed every other medium – it has become our map, our typewriter, our telephone, radio, TV etc. Most importantly though it has made our lives easier. Research that would have taken days spent reading in the library can now be done in minutes – you just “google” it. Defenders of Google say it frees up people’s brains for more important stuff than data entry and retrieval. But is this necessarily good for our brains? The Internet has done even more for us – it has brought us together. We can now stay connected to our friends and family all the time no matter how far away from each other. However with all the emails, tweets, chats, and status updates we get every hour we might slowly be losing our ability to concentrate without even noticing it. Those instant distractions seem harmless to us, but scientists are afraid that our attention spans are being constantly shortened. So what is the Internet actually doing to our brains? Is Google our best friend or is it our worst enemy? We no longer bother remembering facts and information anymore because we know we can always look it up later. But isn’t this bad for our long term memory? And do we trust everything Google says? If we do doesn’t this affect our critical thinking skills?