What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

The digital age has already changed the way we shop, work and play. But what effect is it having on us as a species?

It’s becoming harder to concentrate. In The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr quotes a research project at Stanford University in which cognitive tests were given to a group of “heavy media multitaskers” and a group of “relatively light” multitaskers. The heavy multitaskers were much more easily distracted by “irrelevant environmental stimuli” and less able to maintain their concentration on a particular task. On the plus side, young people today have skills their predecessors lacked. They are adept at finding and filtering information, responding to stimuli and doing fast, incisive analysis.We are always offering best quality stainless steel bracelet the affordable price. As “digital natives” who have grown up with the Internet, they are used to technological change, while “digital immigrants” who grew up before the Internet, find it hard to keep up.Elastic Hair bands from Manufacturers and Suppliers around the World.

An experiment led by UCLA’s Gary Small showed how the web can change our brains in a matter of hours.election of stainless steel earring findings are ready. Twelve experienced web users and 12 novices used Google while their brains were scanned. In the area called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which deals with short-term memory and decision-making, the newcomers showed hardly any activity, whereas the web veterans lit up the screen. Six days later, after the novices had been told to spend an hour a day online, the two groups’ brain scans were virtually identical.

A Stanford study found that the digital generation is learning to socialize differently. Researchers discovered students prefer to text a classmate down the hall in their dormitory rather than talk in person because it is “less risky” and “less awkward.” So they don’t learn how to read facial expressions or navigate “real world” social situations.

A survey published earlier this year found that four out of five 18- to 30-year-olds are unable to navigate without the aid of a satellite navigation device. Other basic practical skills are vanishing, too. A U.S. study in 2006 of 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds found that only 15 per cent used joined-up writing. Most used block capitals, like a child.

Thanks to the digitization of our contact books, we can no longer remember phone numbers.Customized bobblehead made from your own photos, And it is now so easy to find information via Google that we’re getting worse at remembering any facts at all. Four experiments published in the journal Science in 2011 found that people struggle more than ever before to retain information.

The Internet encourages procrastination. According to research collated by Piers Steel, professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, the number of people admitting to procrastination has risen from 15 per cent in 1978 to 60 per cent today. It can’t be blamed entirely on the Internet, he says, but we work in “motivationally toxic” environments. “At the flip of your wrist, there’s YouTube, chat rooms,Hers Couples Gift Heart stainless steel pendant Love Necklace for Lover Valentine, jokes, humour — whatever’s your poison, it’s all out there.”

Thanks to the superficial way we consume information, we’re becoming less empathetic. MRI scans have shown that when we read something closely, the areas of the brain that light up are not just those associated with attention, but also those involved in movement and touch. This suggests that when we immerse ourselves in a piece of writing like a novel, we put ourselves in other people’s shoes. When we read something superficially, we don’t.