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How technology is affecting the younger generation
The effect of the internet on children
The effect of the internet on children
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From my perspective, Nicholas Carr’s argument that the internet appears to be decreasing his capacity for concentration and contemplation does apply to my generation’s internet natives. Generation Z, my generation, has an innumerable amount of internet natives who are perfect examples of Carr’s argument against the internet. My generation, who will be the leaders of the world, are losing their mental capacity because of the frequent use of electronics but especially the World Wide Web. Approximately twenty percent of children from ages eight to sixteen have a computer in their bedroom, and fifty four percent have internet access. Unfortunately, Carr’s argument applies to my generation’s web natives because they are engrossed in the web for twenty-four hours and seven days a week which leads to a plethora of them being sidetracked while doing their activities, unable to focus and reflect on many ideas, and their way of thinking is being modified.
To begin with, a plethora of the net generation cyberspace natives are easily distracted from their activities. Although the internet seems to be innocuous to us, it is mentally harming us. As the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” exclaims, “The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration,” regarding the aftermath of viewing a multitude of internet advertisements in a matter of seconds. This articles stresses that countless web users have a diminutive attention span which results in a countless number of people struggling to concentrate and quickly complete their work. One of BBC News’ articles, “Turning into a digital goldfish,” states, “The addictive nature of web browsing can leave you with an attention span of nine seconds – the same as a goldfish. “ This ...
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...repercussions from using the internet immensely, such as, teenagers having medical treatment for mental problems. One mental problem from excessive time on the internet is depression because they are isolated and have less communications with others when they are on the internet.
The World Wide Web is responsible for making my generation’s internet natives dimwitted. My generation’s brains are being altered, we can’t concentrate, and we get easily distracted by the simplest advertisements in the world. If my generation’s attention spans get shorter, become increasingly incapable of concentrating, and having our cognition change often, then the world will be in store for calamities. Hence, Nicholas Carr’s argument that the internet seems to be diminishing his capacity for concentration and contemplation does apply to my generation’s internet natives.
The author claims that the working of a human brain is deeply affected by the technological advances of the current age. Closely administered behavior of Digital Natives reveals that they have sharper cognitive skills as compared to the Digital Immigrants of the previous generation. She begins by quoting Palfrey and Gasser as her counter-argument, who acknowledge the difference between the current and previous generations, thus: “These kids are different. They study, work, write and interact with each other in ways that are very different from the ways that you di...
Advancements in technology have strived to make life easier for so many people. In most cases, the advancements have achieved its goal, but in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions if the improvements in society have unintentionally hindered our thought process overall. Carr begins the article by providing personal instances when his concentration seemed to diminish due to the internet. He explains how he now loses interest when reading lengthy portions, his mind just can’t seem to remain connected to his readings. He then proceeds to talk about how today’s life is surrounded by the internet, and explains the pros and cons of it. The negative side of it is that his mind now wonders off when seeking information from
The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a result of surfing endlessly on the internet doing research. He supports this statement by explaining how his fellow writers have had similar experiences in being unable to maintain their concentrations. In analyzing Carr’s argument, I disagree that the internet is slowly degrading our capacity for deep reading and thinking, thereby making us dumber. The Web and Google, indeed, are making us smarter by allowing us access to information through a rapid exchange of ideas and promoting the creativity and individualization of learning.
348). Carr introduces his theory by noting the observations in which the reading habits of avid internet users such as himself began to deteriorate (Carr, 2010, p. 348). What initially prompted Carr to invest in a computer was the vast variety of applications and communication tools which benefitted him in his career (Carr, 2010, p. 348). However, he claimed the internet progressed to be a hinderance to his capability to concentrate and work efficiently, thus justifying this phenomenon has changed the way both himself and others were learning (Carr, 2010, p. 349). Drained without having his daily ounce of technology, Carr molded into the man who slowly progressed to be dependent on the internet (Carr, 2010, p. 354).
Atlantic journalist Nicholas Carr confesses that he feels something has been “tinkering with his brain.” The internet, he fears, may be messing with our minds. We have lost the ability to focus on a simple task, and memory retention is steadily declining. He is worried about the effect the internet has on the human brain, and where it may take us in the future. In response to this article, Jamais Cascio, also a journalist for the Atlantic, provides his stance on the issue. He argues that this different way of thinking is an adaptation derived from our environment. Ultimately, he thinks that this staccato way of thinking is simply a natural evolution, one that will help to advance the human race.
According to www.telegraph.co.uk, “[y]oung people aged between 16 and 24 spend more than 27 hours a week on the internet.” Certainly this much internet usage would have an effect on someone. What exactly is the effect of using the internet too much? Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that we are too reliant on the internet and it is making the us dim-witted and shortens our attention span. While Clive Thompson’s article “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” states that technology is not only a collection of knowledge, it also a method of sharing and recording our own knowledge. I fall between both Carr and Thompson. I agree with car on his points of us being too reliant on the internet but disagree when he states that it is making us less intelligent. Meanwhile, I also support Thompson’s statement that the internet allows us to assimilate vast amounts of knowledge but disagree with his opinion on how we should be reliant on
Nicholas Carr states that spending too much time on the internet has caused him to lose focus while reading, writing, and focusing in general. He claims that he gets too wrapped up in the pleasures of the internet such as shopping, scrolling through Facebook, paying bills, etcetera. In summary, it is shortening his attention span. Carr thinks that he needs to step away from the internet in order to correct his “neural circuitry”.
Nowadays, the internet is not used intellectually, it is used for the wrong reasons like watching “a video of a cat vomiting or a teenager falling off a skateboard” (204). It seems as if most of our time is taken up by being on the internet, scrolling through meaningless posts that will not benefit us in any way. The usage of the internet reduces our productivity and diverts us from its real
Google, the Internet, and advanced technology as a whole are disrupting the brain’s normal function and negatively affecting the way that people think. In Nicholas Carr’s publication titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” he contends that the Internet could potentially have damaging effects on cognition and mental functioning that weaken the capability to focus and deliberate (3). As an example, Carr used the company Google to show how its founders aspire to use information to master and control the specific ways in which people search and access resources on the web (7). Before the Internet, people relied on printed works, which offered a more prolonged and deeper way to obtain information. In addition, the Internet is worsening memory, cognitive
The world around has grown to become dependent on gadgets that will ultimately determine our future generations. The society has become immune to adjusting technologies into our everyday life. Are we too reliant on the new technologies that it slowly affects our cognitive skills and perceptive? As a writer, Nicholas Carr, once stated, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” it corresponds to people looking up resources online faster, and effectively rather than learning the knowledge. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” (Carr, 737). Carr is trying to aware that the usage of internet, technology, is becoming a resource that is a lot easier to gather information now
Carr explains how the internet can distract us making it harder to focus on tasks. He explains how processing information has become harder. Notifications, ads, popups can make it difficult if you are trying to read an article or book (Carr 57). The internet has become the center of our attention (Carr 57). Carr is explaining how this is the reason why we are struggling to comprehend a certain piece of information. He adds in his article that scientists, researchers and educators have also noticed the difference in concentration. And in further detail, he explains that we fail to see the important information, thus affecting cognition. He says that the information we gather is not valuable unless we know the meaning behind it. Carr concludes with explaining that the more the internet evolves the less valuable information is to
The internet is ever changing, and so our minds, but can the internet mold our minds? Nicholas Carr and Michael Rosenwald support the idea that the reading we do online is making it harder to be able to sit down with a good book. In their papers they discuss the downfalls of using the web. While on the other hand author Clay Shirky challenges that thought in his piece. Shirky directly battles the idea that the internet is damaging our brains by suggesting that internet use can be insightful. In this essay I will evaluate all three articles and expose their strengths and weaknesses then add my own take on the situation.
How The Internet is Altering you and I Nicholas Carr’s article, “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” grasps and presents the point that far too often civilization tends to look past the good and the bad that the internet truly does in us. The internet is a tremendous gain because our time and money is saved instead of spent on running errands and scheduling appointments. Our brains do tend to become much like the way in which we spend our time, and unfortunately we spend far too much time on the internet instead of socializing and searching for detail. Carr states that, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words.
These two articles are similar in the sense that they agree that the internet and computational objects are reshaping our brain’s structure by changing our neural circuit. By using examples from their personal experiences to identify a trend in technology use, the authors illustrate that the more we bury ourselves in technology the more we are unable to understand material which leads to loss of concentration and the ability to think for ourselves. As an author, Carr finds the internet a beneficial tool, but it’s having a bad effect on his concentration span. Carr points this out by stating “Immersing myself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy, now I get fidgety, lose the thread and begin looking for something else to do” (39). He is no
The internet is full of many things that could make us smarter. However, the internet is full of websites, games, even photos that could very likely have a negative effect on children and their behaviors. Also their education, speech could become affected and they could start doing badly in school or start cursing at a young age. Another thing is that their attitude towards life changes, instead of seeing it as their own giant happy playground they can view it as a very bitter and cold place and start looking, feeling, and talking negatively.