Final Essay

Recently in the past century many scientist, journalist, and even parents have noticed a drastic change in the uses of technology, and as a society we are starting to come across cognitive problems never seen before, vastly due to the way technology is being implemented into our lives. Technology, just recently has become such a huge part of our everyday routine, becoming more and more advanced, and increasingly more than ever so readily available. Through this paper I will bring into play many different views from various sources such as; books, articles, journals, and published scientific papers, pronouncing the idea that through switching everything digital and making such fast pushes in technology; a decline in critical thinking, a loss

When reading articles or books online there is no beginning middle and end such as there are in books. Readers are able to blog their own comments and create ideas to manipulate the stories in their own way. When reading a book you are forced to have a beginning, middle, and end, forcing you to stretch out of reality and to create the imaginational image the book has in store for you. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, Patricia Greenfield did a study on literary reading declined 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002 and the rate of decline is at an increasing rate. Many, including Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, believe that a greater focus on visual media exacts a toll. "A drop-off in reading has correlated to a decline in critical thinking," she says. "There is more emphasis on real-time media and multitasking rather than focusing on a single task at hand (Wolpart 2007)." We are so used to having everything at our fingertips, solely relying on technology to overcome any problems we might face or questions that we have, not taking the time to sit down and work them out ourselves. Scientists from Emory University and Atlanta conducted a study of 12 patients over 19 consecutive day, the study simply had all of them reading the

Everything reading online is becoming shorter and shorter to help website users get more views on their page, and having user’s asses their page the longest, introducing the idea that it doesn’t have enough depth for our brains to full expand its potential. Ian Goodyer, a psychiatrist from Cambridge University, stands behind the fact the internet is misleading and its users are not adequately using it. He introduces a case called google syndrome stating that; many people have a big problem with accepting and believing everything they see online for one hundred percent fact, when in many times this is not that case (Plumridge 2014). A study done by Dr. Robert Wilson showed the brain of a frequent internet browsers uses the web to retain information and memories. It shown these people hardly absorb the information they read online or the facts they studied, rather they retained what to type into the search bar, where to look for it on the page, and which website it was. We use the internet to coin other people’s ideas, not conceptually building our own, or using information to retain or draw connections to previously learned topics. Carr states “most of us with access to the web spend at least a couple of hours a day online—and sometimes much