After reading both articles about how the internet makes us use our brain in a dumb manner and the article that says we have great works published online and also a whole bunch of trash, I think it is probably a combination of the two. If you want to think deep about what you read online, you probably can, not everyone in the study reacted in the same manner and some did think in a deep manner just as if they had read the actual book. You can find the whole of human knowledge online and to say that it is making us dumber might be a slight exaggeration. I think what you are seeing in the tests of what the human brain does when reading a book vs online material has to do with having to remember the knowledge vs being able to find it at your finger tips like we do online. When I read a book, I do read it closely to get as much of the knowledge as I can to stick in my mind, why? Because I do not want to have to re-read the book. Whereas online, if I forget something that I read, it’s but a few key strokes away and I can get the knowledge again, either through reading, listening or watching a video. So are we dumber for using the internet, probably not, we just mentally use the internet in a different way because of efficiency. If anything, the human will find the most efficient way to do something, even if it means we skim article and populate the knowledge into our short-term memory only. That being said, if all you do is spend your life skimming and on Facebook pumping and dumping what you see and read, well, you might be among those who are dumber for using the internet.
My take on the internet and intelligence
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