Is Google Making Us Stupid By Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr in the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that the more people use technology, the more it’s making people stupid. Throughout the article he mentions many examples where he proves himself correct. Google is making us stupid because it’s affecting our concentration the more we rely on technology.

In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr expresses his beliefs and personal experiences on how the internet has altered our brains and how we think. He addresses the fact that, although our brains’ abilities to deep read and concentrate are suffering, the internet is extremely beneficial and convenient. Because of the easy accessibility, it takes little to no effort to find information, and therefore, a minimal amount of thinking is required. Carr highlights that people are more impatient because of the internet and that our minds are becoming more erratic. The author used research, conducted by a U.K. educational consortium, to show that a new form of reading is developing over time; rather than reading every word on a page, it has turned to more of a skimming method. Nicholas Carr realizes that we may be doing more reading than ever due to the internet, but it is different in the way that people have to interpret the text. Reading, unlike talking, is not a natural ability. One must learn to deep read, make connections, and translate the underlying meaning. Overall, Carr believes it is a mistake to rely fully on computers because in the end, it will just be our own intelligence that morphs into artificial intelligence.

Is Google making us stupid? That is a fascinating question with a not so simple answer. Nicholas Carr does a fantastic job of expressing his skepticism about Google; However, he does not bring much in the way of facts, uses broad speculation and relies on a few thoughts of others to bring his skepticism to light. Carr is not very convincing in his manner of trying to reach the rest of the world with his message that Google is hurting us rather than helping us.

In his essay, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr discusses societies dependence to easily accessible information. Since the inception of the internet and search engines, information has been accessible to us instantly. Although instant access to information is a desirable advancement in technology, it comes with questionable consequences. From his own personal experience, Carr explains that since this invention, his brain feels as if it has been tinkered with. Carr explains that his brain does not work the way it used to, that it’s very hard for him to become engrossed in books, articles, or essays. As he continued to try to become engrossed in these readings, he found that his thoughts would wander and he would become restless after just a few

With the rise of technology, society is beginning to wonder if it is helping or hurting us. Many people privileged enough to have technology, argue that though technology is helping the world advance, it is altering our thoughts and perceptions. In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” he blatantly calls out the current generation and expresses his concerns about how the internet is changing the way people interpret information. Carr’s main claim is that the internet is causing people to lose their ability to concentrate and think on their own. Google can affect our cognition but depending on its uses it can make people smarter.

For almost two decades, Google has surely been the top dog of search engines on the worldwide internet. Beginning as a research project by two college students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, called Backrub, Google has now become the answer to all questions. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful. According to Niholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” he states that our use of the internet has serious effects on the way we real, think, and live. Carr’s struggle along with his friends who he’s said are experiencing these same struggles, seem to be putting the blame on the internet for their lack of attentiveness, when there can be other underlying issues other than excessive use of the web affecting your brain.

In my opinion, the invention of the internet, and therefore google/any search engine, has not made us stupid, but rather made us lazy and increased our ability to procrastinate. Before, when students had to conduct research for a paper/assignment, they would have to go to a library

Technology can help us find answers in a matter of a few seconds. In the article is “Why Google Isn’t Making us Stupid … or Smart” Chad Wellmon briefly explains how the internet is not helping us get any smarter or any stupider. We are just not learning anything and we just find results. “Digital technologies, claim the most optimistic among us, will deliver a universal knowledge that will make us smarter and ultimately liberate us” (Wellmon 68). Wellmon is try to explain to us that the Internet will help us in looking up things that we might want to know. We can learn new things just by a quick search. You can look up anything on the internet and you will find answers from all over the world. Therefore, you can learn anything you want about the world. Without Google we probably would have had still been stuck in the stone ages. “Likewise, to suggest that Google is making us stupid is to ignore the historical fact that over time technologies have had an effect on how we think, but in ways that are much more complex and not at all reducible to simple statement like ‘Google is making us stupid’ (Wellmon 69). This quote is telling us how we can learn anything we want thanks to the internet because all we have to do is search something and millions of results will show up at the tip of our fingertips. With this technology we have had made great discoveries around the world. Both the internet and technology is beneficial to every single one of us nowadays because we all use it on a daily basis, either to talk to people or to research for an

To start, I use Google pretty regularly as anyone would if they have access to technology like in today’s society. I personally use Google whenever I need an address for a certain store or a phone number for said store. No one uses phonebooks anymore, when I can just easily type the name in the browser and have accurate results show up in seconds. I also use Google for directions or news updates. Google is extremely helpful because most people live their lives through their phones and Google is right there when you have literally any question and it will be answered in just a few seconds. Other benefits from Google are that the most relevant sites are shown when you look something up. This is very important because if you are looking something up and something else totally irrelevant comes up it is very confusing. Not only that but, Google is ad-free and for someone who is on the Web a lot, ads are extremely annoying and a waste of time. Finally, Google has about one trillion sites indexed as well which is pretty amazing.

In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” by Nicholas Carr argues that google is indeed making us stupid. Carr first introduces his argument stating: “the more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing,”(Carr 315). But right after introducing his personal opinion, he mentions the opinions of other bloggers and scholars that think the internet has indeed had that effect on them. But, in order to order to prove his argument, Carr relied on evidence derived from studies and by relating what google is doing to us now to what occurred in the past.

The emergence and use of computer and internet technologies have greatly revolutionized the world. Everything and every process in the world is attuning to computer and internet technology for effective survival and success. Human beings have succumbed to the greatest effect of the revolution. Initially, human beings conducted their activities and processes manually even when using machines. Today, people largely depend on computerized technologies and automated systems to conduct and run activities and processes. In the article, “Is Google making us stupid?”, Nicholas Carr is showing concern and worry over the way the computer and internet technology have compromised cognitive and reasoning abilities of human beings. The arguments and themes discussed by Nicholas in the article are true and reflect the exact situation in the contemporary world. Carr demonstrates why he believes that the platform that Google offers to speedily access information online is reducing people’s level of concentration and shifts their intelligence. Arguably, the author demonstrates how he believes that Google regularly seizes people’s concentration. That is, internet users can know of something but fail to understand the sources and validity of

How many times per day do you use the search engine “Google.” According to, statistics.org Google had about 7,766,000,000 searches daily in 2015. What made people use Google instead of opening a book? The real question is, how does google impact our self-education? The answer is quite simple. Google decreases our ability and motivation to self-educate. Although it can be argued that google makes learning easier and faster, what are we really learning from Google? The article “Is Google Making us stupid” by Nicholas Carr explains how we no longer think about what we learn. Carr believes we rely more on quick facts opposed to critical thinking or research.

What Google does is ease the life of students by granting them access to resources such as articles, books, websites, and other types of media, which saves their time and makes their busy lives more manageable (Wright 370). They get their information, and they get it fast. This extra time saved by using the Web provides students with the time to discover more information about a specific subject in order to deepen their knowledge. Furthermore, students are able to increase their intelligence when they obtain more information in a shorter period of time instead of spending hours in a book.

Is Google making us stupid, being able to access thousand of information in seconds could not possibly make you stupid. Well that is what I thought until I realized how crippling Google has become. Instead of people reading pages upon pages of information, research, or news it is just a click away now. People are unable to let articles acquire their attention for lengthy periods of time to collect data. Without people reading to collect data could make our society stupid and lazy. Also, allowing people to retrieve information at, such as fast pace reduces people's attention span over time. As technology increases, people no longer depend on paperback books.

In the July-August 2008 Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr published "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google). In this article Nicolas Carr argues that the internet is changing how one thinks, and how it is causing a bad effect on one’s brain. I have to disagree. Although the internet is constantly changing, it helps in a positive way. Firstly, google has become a great resource for educational purposes. Secondly, the internet has become a great resource for intercultural experiences. Due to the general population spending most of their time on computer’s and smart phones, this information is accessible to us whenever needed.