Internet makes people more smarter. Research Paper

The Internet Is Making Us More Smarter
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The Internet Is Making Us More Smarter
Introduction
The internet is definitely making us smarter. Over the years, various speculations have surfaced regarding the effects of the internet on our brain. Carr (2010) argues that the internet offers a vast amount of information that makes it difficult for individuals to comprehend and instead, they end up losing concentration. Shirky (2010) also states that the internet has led to chaos and intellectual collapse. The increased popularity of the internet has been believed to be distracting since they shorten our ability to put more focus on a particular set of information. However, Carr seems to miss the real point since it is not that we are getting dumber, the truth is we have changed the object of our focus. Therefore, we are actually getting much smarter. Also, several recent surveys have also shown that the internet is making us smarter. This essay, therefore seeks to provide important points that support the argument that the internet is making us smarter.
Carr (2008), makes a relatively balanced argument on the negative impact of the internet on our ability to read through lengthy materials. Carr states that the internet has greatly affected the way he and his friends read books, claiming that they find it more difficult to complete a lengthy book compared to when the internet was less popular (Carr, 2008). However, to claim that the failure to complete a lengthy book is caused by the frequent use of the internet is a great assumption which can be proved wrong in several aspects. To begin with, it is false to state that the internet has made us too lazy to be able to read through the information that is presented in several pages without scrolling through or skipping to other pages. Information can be presented in different forms such as visual and written, visual information can be in the form of a lengthy movie or documentary. For a person to be able to understand the information presented in the movie or documentary, they are required to pay close attention from the beginning to the end. Despite the length, individuals are able to closely follow the information presented. Regardless of the means by which the information is presented, be it print-based or visual, it would be false to state that the internet is making us lazy based on the assumption that individuals are unable to read long pages of information.
Also, the availability of a large amount of information can also increase our productivity since our brains will have to be more active in order to process the much information presented online. According to Carr (2010), the vast information provided by the internet formulates ‘the idea that our minds should operate as high speed data processing machines.’ It is true to say that the internet offers a lot of information and that our minds cannot comprehend all of it. However, the vast amount of information gives us an opportunity to conduct further research and compare different sets of data before finally settling on a conclusion. This multi-disciplinary connection of resources availed by the internet gives room for more knowledge and innovation opportunities.
A survey aimed at determining the effects of internet use on the performance of children also proves that the internet makes us smarter. The survey involved 140 children from urban areas who were aged approximately thirteen years old and came from low income families (Packard, 2007). At the beginning of the study, the children had a poor average score in the 30th percentile on the standardized reading tests (Packard, 2007). The families whose children participated in the ...