Impact of the Internet on Critical Reading and Writing Skills - 0 views
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When you are searching the internet how long do you think you spend on a single page? (Hopefully you’re still on this page at this point!) Probably not very long. The internet offers so many gateways to other pages, that it has made it difficult for us to focus on one piece of information at a time. In other words: the internet is making us all a little more A.D.D.
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Experts describe this habit of darting from page to page as "associative" thinking. They have especially noticed this habit in younger children, whom are comparably less focused on studying, reading, and writing then the age group was when measured in the past. This is damaging to reading ability because it decreases our ability to comprehend what we read.
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Another way researchers believe the internet has impacted our critical thinking abilities is that we now use less reliable sources to learn about new ideas. We often accept any article as fact. They found that students children’s reading abilities now do less research before answering a question. They also found that they trusted their friends for answers more than adults. They attributed this habit being a result of internet exposure, but it could simply be that children are more trusting and less skeptical.
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A recent survey by the Pew Research Institute reveals what people think about the internet’s impact on our intelligence. 76% of the respondents agreed that the internet makes us more intelligent by providing access to more information thus allowing us to make better decisions. 21% of the respondents thought the internet does not make us more intelligent and might even lower or IQ’s.
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"What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.” -Nicolas Carr, Author of "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google"
