How Can We Minimize the Negative Effects and Enhance the Positive Effects?
An intense debate over the usefulness of internet is shaping the 21st century’s social and educational discourse. While some sustain that internet helps individuals in acquiring information in an facile and effective manner, reducing the time of searching through its optimized programs and tools, others insist that internet is making people dumber because of its distracting feature (Carr, 2010). In fact, internet has become a part of humans’ everyday existence, improving it in many aspects. Nevertheless, the argument that new technology is affecting humans’ focus, distracting them still remains an issue, which fortunately can be addressed through specific strategies for minimizing the internet’s negative effects while enhancing its positive effects.
While reading a book, the human brain operates complex processes of fighting against distraction, which is a situation that cannot be reproduced while reading an internet article, because of the pictures, links or social networks that distract individuals from reading, studies show (Car, 2010). Because of this demonstrated reality it is considered that people waste time on internet rather than finding useful information, absorbing an internet culture, based on sharing, tweeting, sending emails, in the detriment of actually accumulating useful information (Pinker, 2010). Nevertheless, the advancement of new technologies and internet has proved useful not solely for the human interaction, but also for individuals’ smartness. Nowadays, with just a click, and specific key words placed in a search engine, individuals can more rapidly navigate the internet pages than the physical printed books or newspapers, which can be ineffective for finding the needed information in a timely manner. With a simple “finding” option the internet user can identify the sought explanations within a long text, reading and absorbing what is of interest for him or her. In all this time tweets, Facebook comments, email alerts or links and pictures inserted in the investigated article may divert the reader from his or her text, reducing attention and the intellectual process (Carr, 2010).
The argument of the distraction is not specific to internet, although it is more frequently encountered in the case of new technologies. While reading a book, which is considered a more sustainable source of learning than the internet (Carr, 2010), there can be external factors interfering with the learning process, such as music, people talking around, noise, etc. Just as individuals find their own strategies for separating from external distractions while reading a book, they can elaborate strategies for not allowing themselves to be distracting while learning or reading on internet (Pinker, 2010). Internet can be used more effectively by reducing or eliminating the use of the distracting sources, such as Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, emails (Pinker, 2010) and even music, if it has an adverse effect on reading and learning. By developing a strict schedule based on limited or no social networking sources while reading and sticking to it, individuals will become accustomed and will educate their behavior in a sound and sustainable manner. A repeated behavior will lead to associating learning or reading with no distraction and assimilating this behavior as a normal practice. In this way, the internet will be used in a sustainable manner, allowing more time for reading and learning than for skipping from an email to a tweet or to sharing a picture.
The negative effects of internet cannot surpass its positive effects which generate an ease in finding information in a rapid time. However, for further enhancing the internet’s potential, while reducing its negative effects (wasting time due to online distractions), internet users need to develop personal strategies of educating themselves into a sustainable internet experience. Strict schedules with limited or no social networking access can lead to a more optimized internet usage, reducing the diversions.
References
Carr, N. (2010) Does internet make you dumber? Wall Street Journal. Available with http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704025304575284981644790098.
Pinker, S. (2010) Mind over mass media. New York Times. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11Pinker.html?_r=0.
