The endless stream of links, videos, and social media on the Internet may be impairing your cognitive abilities. Best-selling author Nicholas G. Carr explores this in his 2010 book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist. According to Carr, the overwhelming amount of online content makes it difficult to internalize and retain information, as reported by Fortune.
Web pages are filled with clickable distractions, and even if you believe you ignore most of them, your brain is still making conscious decisions about whether to click each link, share every post, or watch every video. This constant decision-making process can impair the brain’s ability to store important information.
Carr explains, “The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments, may be imperceptible – our brains are quick – but it’s been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when repeated frequently.”
Research supports Carr’s claims. A 2001 study published in the Journal of Digital Information asked two groups to read documents, with one group’s materials containing hypertext. The hypertext group retained less information than the group reading documents without links.
In 2008, University of California, Los Angeles researchers scanned the brains of 24 people using Google’s search function. Those with more experience using Google showed heightened activity in parts of their brains involved in decision-making, like the prefrontal cortex. Even participants with minimal Google experience, after just five days of increased use, began to show similar heightened activity.
Books, on the other hand, allow the brain to transfer information from “working memory” to “long-term memory” more effectively because they do not present multiple sources of information and actions simultaneously. Carr notes, “What we do transfer [on the Internet] is a jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream from one source.” This results in a population of “mindless consumers of data.”
The takeaway? Next time you really want to learn something, consider reading a book instead of browsing the Internet.
