The Effects of the Internet
People have a real fear that the internet is making us become more dependent and less intellectual. We speed through articles, our attention spans are lowering, and it’s lower the youth’s brain development because of it. Shirky teaches theory and the practice of social media, but he’s come to the conclusion that students shouldn’t be using their electronic devices anymore in class. They are getting less and less involved and scoring lower on tests all because he would allow the freedom. However, over the years he’s noticed their attention spans are being affected, as they are constantly multitasking and trying to focus on too many things at once, falsely believing they’re toning their multitasking skills, when in reality, it’s lowering the quality work they’re doing with one activity. Students around people who are on their laptops actually become affected by their behavior in a negative way too, much like secondhand smoking. They’re looking over every now and then, not paying attention to what the professor has saying. Shirky also says that by having no devices being involved at all unless intentionally allowed, he’s noticed more engagements, better learning atmosphere, and overall better grades among his students. It’s hard for him to compete against Twitter or unknowledgeable-but-entertaining distractions and information when trying to teach his students about theory.
Nicholas Carr also brings up how Google is making us stupid, bringing back up the fact that people don’t really read anything anymore but just merely skim through information. People just click on the first few links, read the first few paragraphs, and move onto the next information. We don’t do our own researches anymore and allow others to do it, and most of the time, it’s from people who are just ordinary people like ourselves so we’re drowning ourselves in ignorance. Having that said though, the internet is just full of thoughts and information that comes from the people: us. There’s really no escaping what is found on the net, and since the majority of people are just regular people, not really professionals, we’re going to be seeing a lot of un-scholarly, unreliable information more than we see of the opposite. It’s because we are allowed freedom of speech on the internet, and so there’s going to be a lot of unnecessary information and plenty of distractions. However we just need to be aware of this and not let ourselves believe everything we read on the internet. Much like how Socrates thought writing would less the brain strengthening its memory muscles and ability, when really it helped us in the long run with the spreading and evolving of ideologies and information. The internet can be seen as the same way, where we believe it’s doing us bad but perhaps in the long run it’ll serve to help us more than it does hurt us, if and when used the right way.