Critical Essay: The Consequences of Internet Use

Critical Essay: The Consequences of Internet Use

Our brain is a constantly adapting and developing tool. As we acquire new information, new synapses, new circuit connections in our brain are formed. These connections are made in a split second, even before one realizes that a new piece of information is being registered into his or her brain. Currently the debate is, how is Internet use affecting these connections? The Internet is a great tool to activate many regions of the brain at once because essentially it is a tool that forces the brain to multitask; however at what cost are we allowing the brain to succumb to this tool? Patricia Green claims that, with the use of Internet and other screen-based technologies increasing heavily the mind has increasingly developed “visual-spatial skills” (Nicholas Carr 141), which means that we are able to understand an objects’ depth and see how an object may look in all dimensions only using our minds. However the cost for this new capacity is the weakening of “deep processing” (Carr 141), which includes acquiring knowledge, analyzing and thinking critically, etc. In the age of exploring and learning the Internet may seem to be the perfect tool to evolve, however there are numerous consequences that are being undermined and ignored.

When using the Internet or screen based technologies, individuals use mostly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain. This was determined through a test conducted by Nicholas Carr’s colleagues, who recruited 24 volunteers, which included experienced Web surfers and novices--half and half (Carr 121). The volunteers were given goggles, which projected the images of what they were searching on the Internet; brain scans were taken for these people and compared with the novice individuals. The individuals with excessive amount of Internet time had their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of there brain light up to the max. In contrast the novices’ brains were dark in that region. The crucial part of the experiment came when the novices were told to use the internet for an hour a day for five days straight to do the same test again on the sixth day; upon the second test the novices’ brain light up (like the Fourth of July’s fireworks) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex region. This