Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Carr makes a personal case that his memory and attention span have been reduced because of searching and surfing the Internet. Bruce Friedman states, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print” (2). Carr blames and his colleagues’ note that Internet resources such as Google have drastically reduced research times, they have also drastically reduced their attention spans and abilities to read long articles. In fact, Google is not making the general population stupid, but rather providing a power resource that reduces the time needed to gain information. The slowed attention span Carr and his colleagues are displaying is most likely due to age or conditioning based on the world we live in.

“Neuroscientists have some reason to believe that neural processing speed, like many reflexes, slows over the years; anatomical studies suggest that the brain also undergoes subtle structural changes that could affect memory” (Carey). From this medical journal it is stated by Neurologists that processing speed slows over time. Nicholas Carr is 55 years old and I am assuming that his colleagues are of equal or greater age. Medical studies suggest that the speed at which an aging adult male reads is slower at age 70 than at age 22. The average 22-year-old student can read 5 pages in the length of time a 70-year-old person can read 3 pages. Thus, the younger individual absorbs more information in a shorter amount of time, which retains the attention span of the younger individual while the older individual may become bored. This information would explain why Carr and his colleagues are unable to pursue long novels such as War and Peace in their older years as they were previously capable of accomplishing in their younger years.

“The brain, according to Olds, has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions” (Carr 4). The attention span of young children is shorter than the attention span of an...