Is Google Making USupid: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains

It is a well-known fact that the Internet has become a central part of society, and it has completely changed every aspect of life for the human race, whether it is for better or worse. Nicholas Carr explains his thoughts on how the Internet has changed how people think in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He believes that the human race is losing its ability to think deeply and is creating a distraction culture, and that companies like Google are working to increase this way of thinking. However, the issue of how the human brain is changing with the Internet is very complex, and the answer to this question goes beyond a simple yes or no.

“In 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, 89 percent of cellphone owners said they had used their phones during the last social gathering they attended” (Turkle). As technology keeps growing and growing we find that it has an effect on many things. Nicholas Carr and Sherry Turkle’s articles both relate to how Google is effect many people today. However, Carr’s article focuses more on how it is affected our ability to concentrate and contemplate, while Turkle’s article shows how we have lost the ability to connect with others.

Nicholas Carr is an American author who writes the majority of books and articles about the continuously evolving world of technology and how it is effecting our society. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. In this essay I will be rhetorically analyzing Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” published in 2008. The purpose of Carr’s essay was to bring light to an issue that many of us face but only a meniscal few have come to terms with; and that is that technology is mentally incapacitating our society and simultaneously making us lazy. This essay was intended for anyone was has been consumed in today’s culture by new technological advances to the extent of not being able to function without some sort of device, IE cellphone, laptop or tablet on a daily basis.

The Internet, a word that is vaguely observed by the many people of this world, is an idea that plays with people’s minds and manipulates individuals by slowly taking over the way they conduct themselves. A person’s mind and the way they control their daily lives changes as the Net dominates the world of technology. In the novel The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, the Net is expressed through the psychological and mental health of people’s habits. Over time, society has become accustomed to the ways of self-connection and a loss of interpersonal communication, using the Internet as their shield from the communal society. No matter the type of person an individual identifies as or what electronic device

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how we do it” (Qualman, n.d). According to Merrain Webster 1828, “social media is form of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messaging, and other online (such as video). Technology has involved into something that everyone can utilize effectively just by the swipe of finger or by pressing a single button. We don’t have to go the post office for hand written letter from families and friends abroad, but we can get them through simply opening a chat box online. However, social media has become the addiction to many young people today and even adults alike. We eat with your phones. We study and communicate with others on your various devices. We even go into the bathroom with our devices to ensure that we don’t miss a tweet, recent Instagram post or a WhatsApp message.

It is true that people are becoming more and more reliant on the internet to do everyday tasks. I feel that Carr addresses the issue perfectly in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. If we continue to use technology for everything, we will eventually lose all ability to deep read and make those critical connections that are necessary for true comprehension and application. He indicates that “the more [he] uses the web, the more he has to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (736). Knowing how difficult it was to read and analyze Carr’s article myself, I fully agree with his claims. Having grown up in a world that has always had technology, I must be hyper-cognizant of the task at hand when it comes to something such as reading, particularly if it is something that I deem less than interesting. When I was finally able to get through the entire essay, I started to think about how much I use the internet. I must admit that

Social media has taken over the way that we interact with one another. It is leading the way in which we communicate with family, friends, coworkers and strangers. It is also the way we keep up with our favorite celebrities and gossip. Social media and the use of smartphones are becoming more prevalent in business and the healthcare field as well. According to Pew Research Center, “62% of smartphone owners have used their phone in the past year to look up information about a health condition” (April, 2015). Technology, just like all things come with flaws

Since the rise of technology and smart devices, the public has seen controversy over the benefits and drawbacks of internet usage. Nicholas Carr shared his opinions in the article “From The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” In the text, he claims that it seems to be “chipping away” his “capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr 5). In addition to that, he does not hesitate to state how “some worry they’re becoming chronic scatterbrains” from using the web (Carr 6). His views are painted purple in this piece of writing, as any reader could infer that Carr possesses a slightly bitter tone when it comes to the interwebs. He displays his dislike for the way it is reshaping our brains and mental function, even going

Nowadays, if a young adult hears about a new terminology, instead of going to a library and looking it up in an encyclopedia like what his or her parents would do when they were young, he or she will pull out his or her smartphone and “google” it. Thanks to Google and all other commercial Internet companies, we are closer to all kinds of information, both useful and useless knowledge, than any other time in human history. In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, more than acknowledging the great opportunities which the Internet has brought, Carr brings up his own concern that “the Net is chipping away [his] capacity for concentration and contemplation.” (589) He points out the Net is “tinkering

We use google or anything on the internet everyday every hour for our own use. Technology gets to our minds and makes us forget even the most common things. “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence”(Carr 332). We rely on technology more than books this day in age. The last time I saw a kid younger than a six graders reading a book was when they had to do a book report. Kids do not know what reading could do to them. Kids can learn things from the books they read and have fun reading books that they are interested in because it was their favorite movie they saw. All of us rely on technology not just kids, we all use technology because it is right in our hands or on our laps or desk for work. We are too lazy to read a book or article to do our homework, so we just google the answers. Sometimes I wonder what we would do without the use of technology and what would we do if social media was a thing? The world of everyone that uses technology and not being able to would make everyone confused because they do not know what to with their

Even from a cursory examination of the article Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr, one of the chief problems with technology, which this article heavily focuses on, becomes apparent: many contemporary technologies, especially Google, remove much of the necessity for cognition within life in general. Therefore, the chief argument that will be posited here is one that agrees with the underlying point made by the author. That is, technology is certainly having a detrimental effect when it comes to overall cognition, and companies such as Google are the prime culprits here. However, at the same time, it is also important to note that these technologies, in and of themselves, are also beneficial, and should not be demonized to the extent that the author seems to be arguing here. This paper will take a look at some of the implications of this argument. For starters, the author 's primary argument is that the instantaneous nature of information, particularly in an age of ever-increasing computer and Internet speeds, trains the human brain into receiving this information extremely quickly (Carr 1). This might initially appear to be only beneficial, but the author is also quick to point out the ways that this apparently beneficial concept can actually go awry very easily. That is, the brain never knows when it has enough, and as such, it will almost consistently be seeking out information, continually refreshing pages and searching Google, among other tools, for the latest

The general argument made by Nicholas Carr is that the internet is destroying people all around the world. From not really focusing in school to just all kinds of different stuff in the world like crazy stuff. For example in par. 2, Nicholas Carr quotes that over the years it's been uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry reprogramming the memory. Saying the minds of the others aren't going as far and thinking on their own. Nicholas Carr wants others to know what the internet is doing to people around the world so they can maybe change what they do in their lives to make themselves look better. In conclusion Carr wishes the

Is the internet really making us stupid? That’s the question that many people in our society are asking these days, and we all have our different opinions. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many writers such as Nicholas Carr, in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, and Nathan Jurgenson, in his article “Pics and It Didn’t Happen”, the internet is making us lazy by the minute. It distracts us from the things we need to do, and has also downgraded our intelligence. Indeed, the internet has been a blessing and it has helped us in many ways, such as helping our society to grow, communicating us with far away family members, helping us with researchers, and most of all it has given us a voice. However, in the same way it has affected us in positive ways it has affected us in negative ways. One of the ways it has affected us is in the way we’re thinking. Therefore, the internet has made all our lives easier, but at a price.

Most of us use social media to communicate with our family, friends and our loved once. Since almost all of my friends live 8000 mile away, I use Facebook, Instagram, and viber to keep in touch with them. Bur recently I started noticing it has become more than a means of communication. I start posting a picture and obsesses about how many likes I get, checking other peoples Facebook just to see if they have more friends than me, believing every post without questioning if it’s a fact and funny enough I start sending friend request for people I don’t even know. Christine Rosen, a senior editor of the New Atlantis and resident fellow at the Ethics and Public policy Center in Wessington, D.C. on “In the Beginning Was the World”, she wrote how technology is affecting the society’s critical reading ability. Peggy Orenstein, an author and a contributing writer for the New York Times, on “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” she talks about how social media is distracting as from fully live in the moment. Even though the development of technology have increased the quality of life, it also brought undeniable challenges to our society. The constant use of social media and internet has increase society attention-seeking, Distracted, and decries critical reading. The use of social media has increased dramatically throughout the years.

The Internet has created a generation of the most efficient multi-taskers ever born. Many people will have at least four tabs open as a time (Google, Facebook, Youtube, Pandora, Wikipedia, Gmail, etc.). People are constantly jumping from one web page to the next, clicking on links and opening new tabs and browsers. The method through which knowledge is gained has transitioned from deep reading to fast skimming. Every time a web page is opened the viewer is bombarded with information, almost every page has advertisements or links to additional information lining its sides. The Internet has made mountains of information available to almost anyone. It is fast and easy to find information and facts. Essentially the Internet has become the fast