Your Brain on Computers

“The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr 773). Carr’s point is because people are using the web, it is making it harder for them to concentrate and process information. Carr and Turkle both suggest in their articles that people now have lost the ability to be able to concentrate and to be

Although its intention was to nourish our minds with an instant unlimited source of valuable information, the internet has caused some people to lose their appreciation for long texts and their ability to concentrate. Within the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the author feels that someone has been tinkering with his brain and that he can no longer enjoy reading a book of any length because he cannot sustain concentration on the book (Carr 1). This is a result of the fact that when people use the internet to find information, they habituate themselves to skim along the lines to quickly allocate their answers and once they have gotten what they needed, they close the browser without any further analysis of the information.

The internet is an excellent place to explore our mind and put our thoughts together; however, it also has a negative effect to our brains, and the more we use it the more it decrease our intelligence. In this essay “Does the Internet Make You Smarter or Dumber?” by Nicholas Carr, he argues about the immoral side of the internet. According to Carr, “When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking” (22). Carr’s pint of view about the internet is that it does not make us smarter in any way; if anything it make us dense and slow. Scientific study have shown that most people who stayed on the internet quit a lot are more likely to damage their brains mentally. According to Carr, the internet is also a place to waste our time. Carr backed up his arguments with studies from scientists, researches and even books. In these essay, Carr’s appeals to logic and understanding is the strongest; whereas his appeals to ethos and his appeals to pathos are finite.

In this regard, researchers (Carr, 2010) point out that internet causes the problem of the high level of distraction and inability of users to focus on specific tasks. People become constantly distracted under the impact of internet and telecommunication technologies (Carr, 2010). Internet involves multitasking as the principle activity users have to perform while surfing internet. As they access internet, they start performing multiple tasks. For example, users can search for the specific information but, as they find the information which is slightly different from the target one, they may grow interested in this piece of information. They access new websites and keep looking through various information which may be not even related to the topic or issue they have been searching for at the opening, when they have juts accessed internet. Moreover, even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist (Richtel, 2010). The absence of focus is a serious

In the article “Divided Attention”, author David Glenn presents the problem of multitasking and the inefficiencies it causes to students and average day people, arguing that multitasking and the overconfidence that goes with it limits the abilities of the students without them realizing it. The author is able to successfully argue his point by using studies ran by credible sources as evidence to support his claims and by being able to connect to his intended audience by making it easier for the reader to understand more complex topics in humorous ways.

“Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicolas Carr, argues that using the internet to read is less thought inciting then reading books. Carr has focused on the various claims that support the argument above. The writer claims that the Internet causes lack of concentration as it is full of ads, hyperlinks, and other media which is meant to distract us. This he gives the example of someone reading the latest headlines in a newspaper site when suddenly a new e-mail messages announces its arrival with a tone of some sort. He says that the “The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.” The next claim he makes is that the way we read on the Internet is changing how we use our brains to think; therefore making us less contemplative. Carr mentions Maryanne Wolf who works as a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. Wolf believes that when we read online we become “mere decoders of information”. I believe that Carr uses this example to give the illusion that when we read online we don’t truly gain knowledge but instead we just gather more information.

In his Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr contends that the overload of information is “chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation”(315). He admits with easy accessibility of information online, the process of research has became much simpler(Carr 315). Yet such benefit comes with a cost. Our brains are “rewired” as the cost of such convenience(Carr 316). As the result, “we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s...but it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking”(Carr 317). Carr argues the forming of such habits can prevent us from deep reading and thinking. In fact, he provides may evidences in the

Carr’s premise is that the Web is interfering with our ability to focus on lengthy material. On the contrary, the internet is actually aiding our ability to focus on reading. This holds true for younger children, who are known as the digital natives in our generation. In a research conducted by The National Center for Education shows that “by altering the mode of reading material from traditional paper-based reading to online reading,” the interest of elementary school children increased (Wright 367). Because children of the 21st century are surrounded by technology, they are more likely to gear towards digital media for their mode of learning. Contrary to Carr’s view that the internet “is chipping away [the] capacity for concentration and contemplation,” these children are more likely to read and focus as a result of

Reveals that who are educating more are having bright brain. According to Nichole Carr in the article “Does the Internet Make You Dumber: At least to any who values the depth, rather than just the velocity, of human thought”. Carr says that people who are using more multimedia are having less thought then who read in the old fashion way (196). Studying in old way had a more advantages rather than studying by multimedia, but studying in the in old way have more advantages for example; being creative in doing staffs have more time, although who is studying by medias will have manipulate in tasks.

We often encounter distractions all around in our daily lives. Our attention is divided between different tasks, which make it difficult to focus. The internet plays an important role in distracting individuals to focus the mind and sustain concentration. According to Nicholas Carr, “When we 're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking.”(Carr 224). The internet plays an important role in why it is difficult for individuals to focus the mind and sustain concentration. The internet has many distractions that can often lead us to multitasks and not fully focus on one task. For example, I have seemed students in class using their laptops not for education purposes but searching

The clock is ticking, the work is piling up, and with only a few hours to go before sunrise you stop and realize that you have just read some fifty pages and absorbed almost nothing. Some would agree when I say that this situation epitomizes one of the common problems of the Net Generation. With the help of the Internet, not only has every aspect of life gotten faster and more efficient, but it has changed the way people process information and perform tasks. In addition, while technology does have its benefits, the extensive use of the internet is affecting the way people think.

Using the internet for so long has made us addicted, and we constantly rely on it. If you are doing a simple task, such as reading a book, it is a lot harder to concentrate because of the distraction that comes with the Net. Carr’s take on this is

Writing an essay on the impossibility of multitasking and the learning setbacks caused by technology use in the classroom caused me to reduce my technology use while doing homework. Deak says, “If you are listening to Mozart while you are going maths, whenever your brain starts to hear Mozart it has to leave the maths part, and that takes time. When the brain starts to refocus on maths, it goes through the whole process again” (Morrison 1). Ever since writing this essay, I’ve began to pay attention more to my own technology use and productivity. I no longer take short, frequent breaks while doing school work. Instead, I take longer breaks after accomplishing more of my work before switching to another task. I find that I am now more efficient and less stressed ever since I allow myself to do more work. Prior to writing, I would have never considered such an anti-technology stance, no matter what

Thousands of websites are distracting students from studying time. In an experiment at Cornell University, students who used internet-connected laptops during a lecture did much worse on a subsequent test than students who did not use the internet (Carr, 2010). It indicated that using the internet in class impacts students’ attention span (2010). Distractions can take attention away from learning. In fact, using the internet does not promote study efficiency, but wastes time.

In today’s world, everyone is surrounded by technology everywhere for example, our smart phones can connect to the web along with instant messaging to anywhere in the world. A study by Levine, Waite, and Bowman examines how the relationship between the new collaborative technologies such as instant messaging (IMing) have great impact of the capability of students to stay concentrated on their academic tasks. Accordingly, the authors not only examined the consequences on continuous interruptions of IMing however, they also explored at the consequences of multitasking with their schoolwork. In the study, it was hypothesized that those students who spent a huge amount of time on IMing, they have a tough time focusing on their school tasks such as academic reading. The method authors used to test their hypothesis was by making students to do survey that have 55 item questionnaire that is structured to find out how much each student use electronic media in terms of IMing and what are the few ways they are using instant messaging.