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What Is Tony Schwartz's Article Addicted To Distraction?

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Summary of Addicted to Distraction In Tony Schwartz’s article Addicted to Distraction, originally published in The New York Times on November 28, 2015, he explains through his personal experience that Internet Addiction, a common phenomenon in modern day society, interrupts people’s brain and divides their attention in order to receive and absorb intriguing information online, which as a result, distracts people from their work and daily lives and hinders their ability of processing useful information into long-term memory. Schwartz begins the article with his personal anecdote that how he suddenly realizes the significant amount of time he has spent online deteriorates his reading habit and causes lack of concentration unconsciously while reading.
To demonstrate that addiction to the Internet does interfere with people’s lives remarkably, Schwartz refers to the ideas from Nicolas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, “The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention… We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of …show more content…

However, the craving for the Internet will undermine people’s ability to convert new knowledge into long-term memory. Schwartz illustrates this using the spilling water example. A human brain can only contain a certain amount of information, just like a cup can be filled

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The purpose of Carr’s essay is to raise skepticism of the internet and the influences it has on the mind. The internet has become a part of my daily regimen. Online is where my homework

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According to the prominent pathologist Bruce Friedman, admitted, “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” Carr cites a few studies of internet behavior that is influencing our brain to lack concentration. He proves

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He notes that the development of writing and the printing press led to significant changes in the way people thought and communicated. By comparing the internet to these historical developments, Carr suggests that the digital age is simply the latest iteration in a long line of technological advances that have fundamentally altered human cognition. In addition, Carr appeals to expert testimony to support his argument. He cites studies and quotes from prominent neuroscientists and researchers who suggest that the internet may be negatively impacting our ability to concentrate and process information.

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In this article, Carr highlights the harmful impact the Internet has had on the human brain, affecting the way in which people think. In his article, Carr uses allusions in order to further develop his stance that the Internet has altered the mindset of people. He uses the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to explain this.

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What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr. It inform us that the internet is becoming our primary source of finding information. It is saying that it affects our ability to read books and long papers. The main points for this article are how the internet is affecting us, what we are becoming, also that we are no longer able to focus in long readings, how the internet is becoming our primary source to everything, and the evolution of technology.

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Society's perception of the world has changed as a result of the new options provided by digital technology. In his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, Harvard-educated writer Nicholas Carr analyzes how contemporary technologies are affecting how people think. He offers insight into the psychological ramifications of each technological advancement throughout history and how culture has influenced how society goes about its daily business. In order to demonstrate how negatively digital technology is affecting our brains, he contrasts its impacts with those of earlier technologies like reading, writing, books, and calculators. Due to their over-reliance on the internet, people have allowed themselves to become cognitively

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Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. He’s thinking about it.

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This is showing us the problem that writer Nicholas Carr believes in. The internet can harm our ability to think deeply because our brains are adaptable. The second piece of evidence from this document is “"... what the Internet seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation," Carr wrote.” The internet is so powerful that even Carr himself has noticed that his

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In “Internet Addiction,” Greg Beato explains that internet addiction is, in fact, real, and we need to act. Beato claims that 3 to 6 percent of internet users are addicted, and “we check our emails more often than necessary.” Over the coming years, internet addiction may grow more than any other addiction because of the constant improvement of technology if we do not act. Beato also included in his writing that “the introduction of flat monthly fees, online gaming, wide spread pornography, Myspace, YouTube, Facebook, WIFI, iPhones, netbooks, and free return shipping on designer shoes with substantial markdowns does not seem to have made the internet any more addictive than it was a decade ago” (214, 215). I disagree with Beato because the fact is,

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Nicholas Carr, What the Internet is doing to Our Brains The Shallows (2010) asserts that, “The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation.” He supports this assertion by saying, “They both ultimately achieve their mental and behavioral effects by shaping the synaptic organization of the brain.” Also by, “ We long to keep it activated.” The writer concludes in order for people to improve their thoughts, they will have to cope with the new technology and how they think. Carr believes that technology is taking over how people interact with each other.

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The internet has changed the way we live our daily lives. It changed the way we socialize and has impacted the way we communicate. In the New York Times article, “Addicted to Distractions” by Tony Schwartz, it discusses how the author realized that his addiction to the internet prevented him from creating personal goals that will benefit him. For example, our author found himself one evening reading the same paragraph repetitively before concluding that he just can’t simply focus on the content of the book. This horrified the author because he once found pleasure in reading books, and now instead of reading them he finds himself spending countless hours on the internet.

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The Internet is filled with distractions; in fact, the Net is inherently designed to distract its users. As Nicholas Carr describes, “the Net seizes our attention only to scatter it” (118). The Internet causes its users to constantly shift their focus to new alerts, updates, emails, hyperlinks, ads, videos, pictures, and more. All of these interruptions prevent the user from attentively and thoroughly understanding the material, therefore prohibiting the necessary act of deep and reflective reading (63). Rob Weatherhead, author and head of digital operations at MediaCom says, “the current generation of Internet consumers live in a world of ‘instant gratification and quick fixes,’ which leads to a ‘loss of patience and a lack of deep thinking’”

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As the internet becomes our primary source of information, many people believe that it is changing or rewriting the human brain and affecting the way we think. I say that they are right. We use the internet like its backup memory and do not bother to remember, we hardly give tasks and assignments our full attention and our concentration is suffering, and we are becoming more addicted to technology. One reason we believe the internet is affecting our brain is that we use the internet like its backup memory and do not bother to remember. We do not have to remember mailing addresses or long phone numbers anymore.

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Our way of thinking is beginning to change to the way that computers do. Advancements are made everyday. These new advancements are attempting to make life in general easier for everyone. Nicholas Carr makes the claim that, “as the internet because our primary source of the information it is affecting our ability to read books and other long narratives.” Carr suggests that using the internet is altering the way that our minds operate.

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Over the past 65+ years, tobacco has been a major health concern towards humans. Some say these concerns were always something the creators were more or less aware of, however, their financial gain was great enough for them to continue to produce such a product knowing it will be harmful to people. As Jonathan Turley states, “ To some, tobacco is a symbol of corporate greed and immorality in the marketing of an addictive and deadly product. To others, it symbolizes individual choice and freedom in a life increasingly subject to governmental control.” This is a free country, but at what point is it right for the government to step in and take charge of something that is factually killing millions of humans annually?

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