IS the internet making us stupid? That’s the question researchers from Wellington’s Victoria University asked in a study on people’s reading behaviour. And the answer is: yes. IS the internet making us stupid?That’s the question researchers from Wellington’s Victoria University asked in a study on people’s reading behaviour.And the answer is: yes.PHOTO PROVES SOCIAL MEDIA’S MAKING US DUMBWe might have more access to information than ever before, but reading things online actually has a negative impact on people’s cognition.Associate professor Val Hooper and masters student Channa Herath’s analysis of online and offline reading behaviour found that online reading generally does not have a positive impact on people’s cognition.Concentration, comprehension, absorption and recall rates when engaging with online material were all much lower than traditional text. Unengaged ... people are more likely to skim read online material, the study found. Source: APThis despite people getting through more material thanks to skim reading and scanning online material.People also seem to become distracted when reading online due to emails, checking news, exploring hyperlinks and viewing video clips.“People almost expect to be interrupted when they’re on their computers,” Dr Hooper said.While many respondents said they had learnt to read faster and more selectively, they also admitted they were more likely to remember material they had read offline.The study revealed it’s still common practice for people to print out material they think is important. Changes ... the next generation is expected to be taught to read differently. Source: News LimitedThe data in Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Impact of the internet on Reading Behaviour suggests people still read in a linear, print-based fashion even though we receive information in a different structure.Dr Hooper thinks it will take at least a generation for changes to the way people are taught how to read.“If you think about how we’re training our children to read, they’re being trained by those who were trained in the linear fashion,” she said.Long chunks of text no longer appeal to students, Dr Hooper said.
welp. I PERSONALLY have run across many a topic, that upon reading and walking away, I've felt the stupid soak into my brain. Not that I haven't run across many well thought out and thought provoking threads before, but the durrrr always seem to outnumber the derp derps
Stupid thread, of course it makes us smarter, it's exactly the same / better than learning from books If you read something online, and next time you need that info you remember, then you are smarter than before you read it
It has the potential to make us smarter... That is a world away from actually fulfilling that potential... Depends on who reads, what are the needs of such a person, previous education, levels of comprehension, IQ, motivation............... Such "studies" have way too many variables to calculate in to be of any real value - or the researchers are expressing themselves in way too careful and qualifying a manner that only a journalist can bring out any "definitive" meaning out of such a "agnostic" a result of a piece of "research" which is aware of its limitations.... Oh, bollo@@@ssssss.... Never mind...
Obviously the researchers haven't looked at MDL. I think everybody here learns something and gets smarter every day! Edit: That reminds me of a study I heard about a few months ago. Researchers figured out that dogs can experience jealousy. Really? Wow. I guess no researchers ever owned more than one dog! Dumb asses.
smarter? ach, what is smart? 20 years ago, i could just put an empty floppy into a floppydrive, give a sys command, and boot the pc from it.. now, sometimes, very rarely, i catch myself smiling at all the crazy things people have to do to make pc`s boot at all.. smart?? i was smarter 20 years ago... internet just made m$ smarter.. we are just victims of companies and institutions beyond our control.. and we let it all happen.. not smart at all.. it all depends on if you think that whole rigmarole is smart... the post is still the same.. the bios should have been the same, before they invented uefi.. so who am i to call myself smart now? i really dunno... and i have this dark inkling that all those those researchers don`t either..
They purely reason their 'results' by referring to the online reading process. That has actually nothing to do with 'the' internet. The subject should have been: Have modern mobiles such as smartphones and tablets and their use negative effects on cognitive processes? Fact is that the rapidly increasing use of such devices will have a huge influence on growing kids. To focus on a device almost like an addiction will also affect social aspects...
Obviously it doesn't work, otherwise the difference between who and what would have been noticed, it seems...
How can infinite and free information not make you smarter ? Unless all you do all day is troll and watch pr0n
The narrative is misleading. What makes you smarter is genetics, not habit. This is like saying that farmers these days don't know how to farm because they use big machines instead of work the land with their own hands. While this is true, it's irrelevant because farmers are likely never going to need to return to that manual labor ever again.
Genetics is just the basis for getting smart(er) but - while genetics is "a minimal must" without which there is no "smart", the fulfilling of the potential we get with our genes is strictly optional and it depends on stimulation, hard work, creating (good) habits and so forth....
In order to learn you must be able to learn, agreed, that is genetics But in order to get smarter, you must absorb information and retain it, the internet is a massive source of information, so long as your brain is not made out of carrots, you can use the internet to become smarter If I take an online IT course and learn 50% more than I knew before the course, then the internet made me smarter Yes I could do the same at college, or from books, either way, books, college, internet, if you learn something you didn't know from them, they made you smarter
No, it's not the same as Uni! At Uni lots of filtering is already done for you and you are guided. Internet is/can be dangerous because it is really difficult to filter the ginormous quantity of info! At Uni you are tested. Regularly, for a long time. Internet is pure nonsense by comparison.
I find it interesting how vaguely the term "smart" is handled. IMO, we should differentiate between "knowledge" and "wisdom." The internet is a source of knowledge (actual information), but wisdom (the mental processes that handle that information) is dependent on the person. So no, the internet won't make you more wise... just more knowledgeable. Furthermore, I'd like to point out that yes, the internet (referring to standard web browsing here) does tend to foster a different thought process than was prevalent in previous generations. Take note of your parents and grandparents that grew up primarily in an age without the modern internet. They had to store the information in their memory because they didn't have convenient access to it like we do today. We, however, can simply research anything at a whim; we don't have to memorize much because the internet is an extension of our own human knowledge. A sort of ephemeral, disembodied hivemind, if you will. So the difference OP is referencing here is how we access information. Without the internet, we develop dependence on memory; memorization of large amounts of information is deemed "smart" in this view. With the internet, we develop dependence on heuristics; ability to deduce, filter, and locate information is deemed "smart" in this view. So yeah, so long as we mish-mash terms like "smart" and "intelligence" without delving into how the internet actually impacts the mind's mechanics... The discussion will go nowhere...