Is Google Making Us Stupid?

I was more than excited to read this article, mainly because anything about the internet is something I can easily relate to. The internet is a part of my every day life -- I use it for school, social networking, shopping, recieving emails. . .just about everything. While it is such a useful and convenient resource, I am fully aware I spend far too much time online. (Facebook has become my safehaven.) I was surprised to read however, that the internet could be changing the way we think. Maybe there truly can be too much of a good thing.

Since about 7th grade, the internet has become a necessary resource in my life. Research projects that had once meant class periods in the library now meant periods in the computer lab. Instead of having to search shelf-by-shelf for information, the internet did the work for us. In a matter of seconds, hundreds of links were presented to us; all the facts we needed were just a few clicks away. While this was so much easier than having to do the work by hand, I realized that it wasn't as beneficial to me as a student. Researching online provided me with more precise answers, but I was missing all of the information in between.

Mr. Fischer always askes his students if they're learning the material in his class or really learning it. When it comes down to it, most of the students (myself included) aren't actually learning anything, just temporarily sticking it in their minds until after they've taken the test. Both cramming and the "hunt-and-peck" method have become common ways of quickly filling up your short-term memory with information. Nowadays, it's not out of the ordinary to learn information piece-by-piece instead of looking at the big picture. Contemplating has turned into calculating and pondering into processing.

Before reading this article, I hadn't made the connection that maybe the internet could be what's caused me to be so distracted in recent years. Since middle school, I've noticed a lot of changes in my homework/test-taking/researching habits. It takes me so much additional time to do my homework/tests. My mind goes off on tangents; I constantly get bored with what I'm doing. Could this be because of too much time on the World Wide Web? Has the internet trained my mind to function in this staccato matter? Ironically, as interesting as I found the article, I couldn't read more than 1-2 pages without getting distracted. My mind was in other places.

I wish people weren't so dependent on the internet. If it were up to me, I would get rid of it altogether. (Yes, it's made things more convenient for us, but on the whole, it's hurt us more than it's helped us.) That would never happen of course, because we as a society rely too much on it. Hypothetically, I wonder if my scatterbrain could ever mend itself from the evident effects of the World Wide Web. I'll have to Google it. . .