Is Google Making USupid Analysis

With new technological advancements occurring more rapidly each year, it is no surprise that there is extensive conversation about how these new progressions impact the brain’s development and cognition. In researching this conversation, one trend has become evident; there is a universal acknowledgment that technology is indeed changing the way we think. The discrepancy between members of the conversation lies in how they believe technology will affect our future. Opinion based pieces such as Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” conclude that we should be apprehensive about technology advancing. Conversely, articles written by experts in psychology and the brain such as "How Has the Internet Reshaped Human Cognition?" by Kee and Loh,

Citing anecdotal evidence, historical examples, and research studies, Carr asserts that our collective intelligence is being depleted due to technology. One of Carr’s main pieces of supporting evidence is a personal anecdote about how he is more easily distracted than he used to be. “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” (page number). Nicholas Carr, someone who is not an expert in psychology deliberately uses phrases such as “dragging my

After stating his claim Carr again relates this finding back to himself to show why he is pessimistic about the future. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Two experts in the field of neuroscience, Loh and Kanai reach a different conclusion. In their review of the Internet’s effects on cognition "How Has the Internet Reshaped Human Cognition?" Loh and Kanai examine studies that both agree and disagree with Carr’s argument. One study conducted by DeStefano and LevFevre in 2007 showed that hypertext environments do indeed have higher processing demands. Specifically, hyperlinks raise our processing demands because they force the reader to make a decision as to whether or not they should click the link. While Kep and Loh acknowledge the validity of this finding, they point to a study done by Antonenko and Niederhauser in 2010 which again provides extremely uncomplicated ways to overcome the potential negative effects on cognition. Namely, Antonenko and Niederhauser found that providing a brief