Internet is supposed to make you smarter, but that’s not what scientist Nicholas Carr says in his book where he claims that the digital age is changing our brains and making us more stupid! Carr said in an article in the Daily Telegraph that the internet is complete with distractions and interruptions will make the human thought process scattered and superficial.
In his latest book called “The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember“, he noted his loosing ability to concentrate and contemplate and his increased desire for constant stimulation. According to his book, people who read text filled with links understand less than those who read printed text.
He claimed that people are continually distracted by emails, updates and other messages and those understand less than who are able to concentrate. The book also said that people who multitask are less creative and less productive and it was beneficial for people to do one thing at a time. Most of the blame was laid on social networking sites which send out updates and streams of information making matters worse.
An experiment was conducted at a University where half the class was allowed to use laptops with internet connectivity during a lecture while the other had to keep their computers turned off. It was found that those who had no computers performed well in a test while those who browsed the web did bad. There were other similar experiments conducted where as the links in an online document go up, reading comprehension slows down.
So who doesn’t want to be called stupid?
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