Does The Internet Make You Dumber By Nicholas Carr

In the essay,Does the Internet Make You Dumber, by Nicholas Carr he analyzes the effects of internet usage on the brain. Carr begins his analysis with a quote from over 2000 years ago by a philosopher stating that “to be everywhere is to be nowhere”(2). Carr argues that people are capable of knowing many new things all at once with internet usage, but this does not have any positive aspects to the human mind. Carr continues with summaries of examples that prove his idea that the internet does not have any allow the mind to think critically. For example an article by a psychologist, Patricia Greenfield, in Science Magazine last year described how different activities such as playing video games, may increase visual skills but decrease in-depth thinking. Another experiment at Cornell University determined that allowing students to use the internet while class is in session weaken …show more content…
With all the things we intend to manage simultaneously, we don’t train our mental abilities to understand all of them. On the contrary, all we do is accustomed our minds to switch from objective to objective unsuccessfully. The mind learns that it is perfectly acceptable to change its focus rapidly however it does not retain anything from either perspective. Carr explains this when he breaks down the results of an experiment down at Stanford University where a professor stated “Everything distracts them”(3) after he analyzed those who multitask versus those who did not. Multitasking does not benefit the human mind because it makes the mind practice bad habits. Carr emphasizes “The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on all tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish important information from trivia” (3). Those who constantly multitask, believing that they are advancing in their to-do list, were actually picking up bad habits without any