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important ongoing change to reading itself in today’s online environment is the cheapening of the word.

We already know that "suffering builds character", but a new study suggests that it may do a lot more than that.

Successfully coping with stress at an early age may significantly increase your chances of being a more resilient adult, as well as strengthen your ability to regulate emotions.

Parents may feel that by preventing their child from encountering any and all potential hardship they are helping to preserve their emotional well-being, but going through a little stress and encouraging them to cope with it effectively will benefit them far more when it comes to being a more resilient, independent, and emotionally stable adult.

Your brain doesn't like uncertainty

Certainty on the other hand feels rewarding, and we tend to steer toward it, even when it might be better for us to remain uncertain.

A vast prediction machine

What is it that makes the Internet so compelling to so many? Aside from the obvious fun and entertainment, educational and business opportunities, and show-offism; I think it boils down to a slogan taken from the eighties. No fear! The playing field is level. Size doesn't matter, really. Inhibitions and reservations are out the window. Internet life is people with diseases and addictions, exposing souls and sharing their recoveries. It's about overviews of history warning future generations not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Sure there are a few kooks to throw us off guard, but mostly the Net is just us being ourselves without fear of reprisal. How refreshing. The Internet is people talking and sharing ideas. Our best and brightest, wallflowers and flower children, the girl next door and the Doc who delivered your kids. It's about you and me. We are all using our own cognizant voices, and we're listening too. We're challenging the status quo, and we're offering alternatives. Collaboration on a global scale all tied together by that simplest of cyber friendships, the hyperlink. Communication has never seen anything like it. I first considered all this ten years ago when that sociology study came out. Another ten years later, my life is even more enriched by the Internet. So to answer your question, I don't think it's the Internet that has whacked your brain, I think you might want to be looking elsewhere. If anything, the Internet is keeping you stimulated.

Through the power of Google Earth, you can travel the globe from the comfort of your computer screen, peering down on everything from above. But once you change your perspective – if you go into one of the buildings that you’ve looked down on – you have to upload a new map. Now, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered that the brain also creates multiple independent maps while finding the way in the physical world.

Instead of just one big map, the brain makes a whole series of maps, some very fine grained, and some more rough – along with an advanced sorting system.