article response

These articles provided a lot for me to digest, too much perhaps, but even among the overload, the article “The Internet: Is it Changing the Way We Think?” stuck with me due to the compilation of viewpoints from many social scientists, psychologists, neurologists, etc. Even though all of the contributors seem to agree to an extent with what the original premise is, that the internet is causing a mental shift in its regular users, they seem to disagree in a much larger extent about whether the changes are “good” or “bad”.
The majority of these individuals see the brain as plastic. It is malleable and changeable on a day-to-day basis, which seems true given how the body itself is malleable. The mind continues to take in information, and just as opinions can be formed, the way the mind thinks can be changed, or manipulated. The Internet is causing the brain to think in a different way, using different aspects of the brain.
The consenting opinion, or rather the one that appears to think of this process as a good thing, seeing it as, essentially what the Google executive stated in the “Is Google Making us Stupid” article, a second brain. It clears away the need for one to do all the memorizing that was deemed necessary for the growth and development of young children, whether in school or church, and leaves room for the “important” things, later in life when all the things memorized as a child become nonessential. In another article, “Internet Use ‘good for the brain’”, it is also stated that browsing the web could increase the critical awareness of the elderly, as it stimulates a large amount of the brain.
The dissenting opinion sees it as a bit of blessed nuisance. It’s something that can’t be done without, but it also causes hardship. The contributors in the article have a variety of reasons for disliking the effects of the internet, but of course what seems to be the most popular reason is the decrease in attentiveness among even the contributors. Perhaps even more so, as pointed out in the article “An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness”, the effect it has on the social capabilities of individuals who shut themselves away from face to face interaction and associate anonymously over the internet. This, according to the article, leads children and young adults to ostracize themselves and become more depressed.
Both of these sides see the same effects of the web and based on the observation of different focus groups arrive at different conclusions as to whether the effects are positive or negative. I, personally, am not certain whether the internet is actually sapping attentiveness out of people. I find it just as likely that it’s more of a result of media itself being integral to our daily lives. As far as the children becoming more depressed, I think that may be the result in different ideas that drive parenting these days, and that children who are naturally more depressed would find the computer an easy way to shut themselves off. Depression has always caused individuals to become reclusive. Nowadays people just have a way to be reclusive while still being connected to the outside world through an anonymous terminal.
One idea that I do agree with, wholeheartedly, is that the internet is beginning to affect peoples ability to deal with persons on a face-to-face basis. Just looking within the school, if you look at the incoming freshman both last year and this year, they’re a very quiet bunch when not speaking amongst themselves, versus when I first started college and would go to social gatherings to form a social network. I think people are too comfortably with anonymity and are not comfortable presenting themselves before new people, mainly due to the forced restraint that has to be practiced.
Anyway, I find that while the internet might be contributing to the media madness that rushes at our mind everyday, there are so many things changing at once that it’s hard to state that the internet itself is changing our brains. While I can see the points made by the various articles, without seeing a sample audience and some testing, in the end all I can do is speculate. I saw it most profoundly in the original article I mentioned, but the people consistently say that it “seems obvious” that since our mind is plastic our mind would be changed by something as monumental as the internet, and I would agree looking at it like that, but saying that something “seems obvious” seems to imply that there is at the theory should be held with at least a little doubt as there is a lack of hard evidence to support it. Right now it is still in the realm of the social sciences, and is built up of speculation with some observation of sample groups.