Is our increasing use of digital media making us dumb?
More people are watching television, playing video games, reading news, spending time on social networks and using video on demand services than they were six months ago according to a survey published today by the KPMG Survey. Since the digital technologies became widely available, educators, scholars, parents and policy makers have been discussing the implications that they may be causing to the literacy, social tolerance, aggression and attention spans in the young people. Considerable steps have continued to be made in the scholarship of most of these areas. For example the educational benefits of the video games are being documented by some scholars like Johnson in 2005, Gee in 2003 and Shaffer in 2006. Meanwhile, debates on the relationship between violence and the video games have continued to persist.
Some of the effects of digital media that have raised concern include the nature of the personal identities which have been formed online, personal privacy in environments in which many forms of information can be disseminated and gleaned, the actual meaning of authorship in a place where several anonymous writers produce knowledge, the manner in which people treat and interact with one another, trustworthiness and credibility of organizations and individuals that we interact with on the internet. The issues have also been considered to be important even offline and yet the digital space may have newer or distinct concerns. It hence becomes critical to ask if the digital media are leading to the making of new mental models with respect to privacy, identity, authorship and ownership and credibility .
Even though the World Wide Web has been in existence for around 20 years, it is very difficult to imagine how life would be without it. The World Wide Web provides instant access to large amounts of information and also the ability to stay connected to colleagues and friends continuously. Our dependence though, on the digital media has its dark side. An increasing body of scientific evidence has continued to suggest that the internet which has constant interruptions and distractions has turned people into superficial and scattered thinkers.
Information is gathered and knowledge is retained significantly more when reading a hard as compared to reading on the internet. A book or an article written on a paper is all where the focus is and as such more attention is paid to the information and as result the reader becomes more knowledgeable. However, when a person is reading something on the net, it becomes very easy to be distracted and to go off topic. It only takes an attractive, colorful sidebar link to appear on the screen and one loses track of the original intentions to read the article they were in. Unlike while one is reading a book, on the computer one is able to multitask by opening multiple tabs. If a message is received on say Facebook, the tab on which the page is flashes and then the computer goes on to make a sound. It is presumed that if that happens, one would easily be tempted to stop reading whatever they were reading online to attend to the message on their Facebook.
The results that are emerging are troubling especially to those people who value subtlety of the human thought rather than just speed. Studies show that those people who read text which has links comprehend less compared to those who read word that are printed on pages. Those people who watch multimedia presentations that are busy remember less than the people who take information in more focused and sedated manners. People who are usually distracted by updates, emails and other messages have been seen to understand less compared to who are in environments where they are able to concentrate.
It has also been proven that people who multitask are mostly less productive and creative as compared to those who carry out one task at a time. The thread that is common in the disabilities is division of attention. Richness of memories, thoughts and also personality hinders the ability focus the minds and retain concentration. It only when we are able to pay attention to new information that has the ability to associate it with knowledge in our memory that is systematic and meaningful. Such associations are very important in thinking critically and also mastering concepts that are complex.
When we are continuously interrupted and distracted, as it is when we are looking at the screens of our mobile phones and computers, our brains are unable to forge the expansive and strong neural connections which give depth and distinctiveness of our thinking. Our memories become weak and our thoughts disjointed. And as Seneca a Roman philosopher once said, “To be everywhere is to be nowhere”. Following an article in Science last year, a development psychologist Patricia Greenfield who a Children’s Digital Media Center looked at many studies on how the different media technologies affect the cognitive abilities.
Most of these studies showed that certain tasks on computers such as playing video games do increase the speed at which human beings can shift their focus on icons and other images on the screens. However, other studies have pointed out that such rapid shift in focus even if it is performed adeptly; it results to more automatic and less rigorous thinking. It has been said that mediums develop cognitive skills at the expense of others. The growing use of media that is screen based has continued to strengthen the visual-spatial intelligence of people and this can in turn strengthen the ability of people to carry out jobs which involve keep track of signals that are rapidly changing like monitoring patients during surgery or piloting a plane.
However, the visual-spatial intelligence has been connected with new weaknesses in processes of higher-order cognitive which include mindfulness, abstract vocabulary, critical thinking, inductive problem solving and imagination. It would be a better thing if the effects disappeared as soon as the mobile and computer screens are turned but this is not the case. Scientists have discovered that the cellular structure of the brain readily adapts to the tools we utilize in finding, storing and sharing information. When we change our habit of mind, the new technology goes on to strengthen a certain neural pathway and in turn weakens the others. These alterations mould the manner in which we think even when we are not using that technology.
An experiment conducted at a university in the US, half of the students in a class had been allowed to use internet that had been connected to their laptops in a lecture while the other half had shut down their computers. The students who were browsing the web were seen to perform worse in the subsequent tests of how well they had retained the content of the lecture. Some earlier experiments indicated that as the amounts of links on an online page increased, the comprehension of reading goes down and as more kinds of information are displayed on the screen, people remember very little of what they see.
Through continuous use of the digital media, our brains are massively being remodeled by this behavior. Mr. Merzenich who is a professor at the University of California conducted an experiment which indicated how quickly and extensive the neural circuits often change in response to experience. He continued to say that he was worried about the cognitive impacts of the interruptions and distractions the internet presents to us. The long term impacts on the quality of people’s intellectual lives and this could be deadly.
As most of us know, not all distraction have negative effects. If we again concentrate so much on tough problems, we can get stuck in a situation referred to as a mental rut, but if we leave the problem stay unattended for little while, we often get back to it with fresh ideas and lots of creativity. It has been proven that breaks in people’s attention give the unconscious mind the time to come to grips with a problem and this result to cognitive processes and bear information which is unavailable to the conscious deliberation. It is then true that when we shift our attention from mental challenges for a while, we make better decisions. However, the constant distractions encouraged by the internet are very different from the type of temporary and purposeful diversion offered by our minds which refreshes thinking.
The internet distractions short-circuit both the unconscious and conscious thoughts preventing the minds from thinking creatively or deeply. The brains are turned into simple signal processors. Many young people now days use multiple mediums at a time. They make calls while they play computer games or write emails. For the reasons that everything one does leaves its traces in the brain, when there is optimum development, the memory links are built and formed in the initial months and years of one’s life and the structure piles up to form the basic foundation of the other things we learn later on in life.
When drivers exclusively depend on the navigation technology, developing the ability of orientation is made impossible even though their brains present them with the ability of learning how to do so. This is also the case when it comes to children who often use styluses on SMART boards instead on developing skills on writing which would keep the brain in check. Computer take over most functions of the classrooms which are really good practices for children and this has negative impacts on learning.
The things we seem to sacrifice in our searching and surfing is the capacity to engage in quieter, attentive mode of thoughts which underpin reflection, introspection and contemplation. The web does not encourage us to slow down. In fact, it keeps us in the state of continuous mental locomotion. The increase in social networks such as Twitter and Facebook that pump out streams of only brief information has exacerbated the problems. There is no problem with absorption of information quickly, in pieces and in bits. People have often skimmed the newspaper even more that we have read them. People also run their eyes over magazines and books to get an idea of a piece of writing so as to make a decision whether it requires more reading.
That ability to browse and scan is as crucial as the ability to deeply read and think. The disturbing thing is that, skimming has become the dominant mode of thinking. It is becoming the preferred method of analysis and learning and as result losing the main goal of learning. Fascinated by treasures of the internet, people have become blind to the damage being caused to our culture and even our intellectual lives. I am not quit not sure of whether the digital media such as the internet is making us stupid or not. What I am sure about is the fact that living in a state of partial attention and distractions is very far from being smart.
Work cited
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Bauerlein, M. Online Literacy is Lesser Kind.
Carr., N. (n.d.). Review of The Shallows. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20009036-265.html
Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction. (n.d.). Retrieved from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=all
Nicholas Carr., C. (n.d.). We're taking this too seriously. Retrieved from http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/314134/june-30-2010/nicholas-carr
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