How the World Wide Web Affects the Human Intellect

Can anyone imagine human life without the internet these days? The most likely do not unless one belongs to the uncontacted tribe living somewhere in dense forests of South America or New Guinea. Probably everyone was thinking about the influence of the global network on the human ability to think out, make quick logical decisions, having sharp or quick intelligence, and express all above in simple words. This is not an easy question. Although older people still remember life without the global web, the younger generation cannot even imagine the world without social networks and online information sources.

Smarter of Dumber?

The discussion about the influence of the internet on a human brain continues for many years. The first article concerning the issue was published in the Atlantic in 2008. The author mentioned that although the internet is an indispensable source of the valuable information, the extensive usage reduces the human ability to think analytically and make decisions quickly and efficiently. Nicholas Carr suggests that similarly, people lost the ability to read long texts and try to find just key phrases they need at the moment. Obviously, such article caused stormy debates in the internet society. The authors of the article Does Google Make Us Smarter express an opposite opinion to Carr’s. They base only on other people’s opinions representing a web link, not even bothering to provide any details or evidence except for two images showing the number of internet users by the World’s major region and a diagram displaying a dramatic growth of the Google search requests during 15 years, from 1998 to 2013. However, these numbers do not prove anything but the fact that more and more people are using the internet. The today’s statistic says that people do 57,148 Google searches, watch 135,080 YouTube videos, and send 2,538,238 emails per second. However, does it mean that people become smarter using all these online sources? The Carr’s opponents are citing other's opinions not even recognizing that they are substituting the intelligence and ability to think with the easy access to the information, not just information for analyzing, but the one which already has all answers. Even for this, relatively small article, it is required to provide at least nine citations. That is minimum one citation for every 100 words, leaving literary little space for the expression of own opinion replacing it mostly with the citations from the online sources.

Internet and Memory

In the Science Magazine, they performed an experiment regarding users memorizing Internet data and published the results. Authors demonstrate that the ability to remember weakens within the group of students if it is known that the source of the information is easily accessible.

As it is visible in Figure 1, most of the respondents, according to the experiment data remember only the ways to find the information but not its content. The experiment was performed five years ago. The today’s results will likely have even more dramatic results, as much more people are accessing search engines from their mobile devices. Furthermore, another experiment conducted by D. Wegner demonstrates, that advances in computation and data transfer blur the lines between mind and machine, transcending some of the limits on memory and thought imposed by the shortcomings of human cognition. However, the results mean not only the danger but also new horizons considering the ways the human memory will be used in the near future. Although the mechanics of the memory is not fully learned yet, some scientists believe that a part of the memory used in the past as a storage could be freed up for creative thinking. Despite some researchers just speculate on the experiment results considering the higher brain activity as improved memory, there is a glimpse of hope.

Learning and Analytical Skills

According to Clay Shirky, digital media and the internet made sources of information extremely cheap and easy to access. However, there are endless streams of the mediocre content produced by amateurs making the value of the huge amount of the information very doubtful. Such factors may create the risk of learning without a proper analysis, i.e., people may perceive not confirmed information as the truth and make wrong conclusions. Additionally, Weyers argues that the humankind would rather easily access and find solutions or answers pretty quickly online with the information the internet supplies than perform some analysis and use own critical approach to the problems solution. Another example is a process of reading that the young generation completely declined and substituted by online visual content and video games. Thus, the passive brain activities deteriorate thinking and analytical abilities of the individuals.

Although the internet is an indispensable source of information, it, obviously, has some advantages and disadvantages not concerning the moral side and purposes of any particular website, but the human acumen and intellect. The thoughtless usage of this tool may lead to a decrease in human intellectual potential and decision-making abilities.
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