Quick, what’s the capital of Uruguay? Who is Zac Efron dating? What really happened in the movie “Inception?"
Don’t know? Never fear, you can just Google it.
In 2006, “Google” officially became a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary. It describes the behavior of millions of Americans today. “Googling” is the act of whipping out your smartphone, tablet or laptop, punching in keywords at www.google.com and accepting the first answer you see in the results feed, regardless of whether the answer is from Yahoo Answers or the Royal Society journal.
Is this making our society smarter, or dumber? Well, do you believe a friend when they say, “But I saw on the Internet that…?” Of course, having a nearly limitless amount of information is invaluable. Thanks to the Internet, people can learn about virtually any topic and develop new skills.
Moreover, the Internet has formed unique and intimate connections between people that would have never been possible with any other type of communication device. When I log onto Facebook, I can meet people thousands of miles away who also share my love for Marvel Entertainment and how to make a Captain America costume on a college student budget for Halloween.
Unfortunately, it is exactly that informality that can cause problems. There is a reason most professors disapprove of Wikipedia. Who knows whether all of the facts on the Henry VIII page were correctly researched or written by a misinformed high school student? Wikipedia’s “About Wikipedia” page states that “anyone can be bold and edit an existing article or create a new one, and volunteers do not need to have any formal training.” I can’t deny that Wikipedia is great for basic facts, but it says a lot about our society if when we use Wikipedia and similar websites as a source for “facts.”
[quote]" What’s disturbing is skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought." - Journalist Nicholas Carr, on the state of the Internet [/quote]
The nature of “Googling” also contributes to our nation’s concentration. A study done by research institute “Statistic Brain” showed the average adult’s attention span to be 12 seconds in 2000, but by 2012 it had decreased to eight seconds, a drop of four seconds in only two years. When completing an assigned reading of 30 pages or more in a textbook, I frequently find myself skimming entire paragraphs and letting my mind wander.
Not being able to focus on one task for an extended period is now a struggle for many Americans, especially Generation Y. Thanks to our fast-paced lifestyle of multi-tasking, we constantly need stimuli to keep us engaged. Nothing is wrong with skimming to find the necessary details; however, as journalist Nicholas Carr said in a 2010 article for The Telegraph, “what’s disturbing is skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought.” From the prevalence of social media tools such as six-second Vines and 140-character Tweets, we can certainly see the truth of his statement.
Today is the time to make an impact on the future. Already Elon University communications professor Dr. Strauss remembers that “it took [her] a year and a half before [she] even went into a library” while completing research in 2006. Will our children grow up in a world where “books” are one-page summaries written in shorthand? Force yourself to read the next article without skimming or multi-tasking, and you may be surprised at how hard it is. Starting now, with the next homework assignment, do not let Google and social media dictate your understanding of the world and take control of your own intelligence.