Is Internet making us dumb?

Not so long ago. Before the dawn of the connected world. When life was characterised by an analog slowness devoid of smart phones and internet, things and ideas moved in a pace that had a dignified rhythm, grounded in a thoughtful understanding. There was enough time and space for information to filter down and become knowledge. It was the era when one could enjoy the unblemished happiness of what Socrates described as “The pleasure of knowing something new.”

In those days, when we came across a word or a phrase, while reading a newspaper, magazine or a book, the meaning of which we didn’t know we would consult a fat book called the dictionary. It was to be found in every household, sometimes sitting on a study table or squatting amidst the decorative items of the living room. They even had a conspicuous presence in the side tables of the bedrooms and trouser pockets in their miniature avatar.

A precise method is to be followed to come to the word we are looking for. Our guide map would be the sequence of the alphabets in the word we are searching. After some turning of pages we would come to the same word in the bulky dictionary. The method was easy but at the same time ingenious. In a rudimentary sense our mind would be functioning as a “search engine”, making calculations and taking us to the right page. But things have changed now. When was the last time you used a Dictionary? Or for that matter, can you even locate that book in your house?

It is Google search, our one-stop destination for all our queries that has replaced the dictionary. No doubt this method is much easier and less cumbersome, but in the process we are losing out on something important. Like the outcome, the method of arriving at the outcome is also a crucial part of the learning process. For instance, the work that goes into preparing an answer to a question: the book that we consult, the discussion we have with our friends, etc, is also part of the answer. We all have used Google to find word meanings. But how many of those words do we actually retain? Many a time we find ourselves looking up for the same words or the phrases.

With a physical dictionary, it is not only the meaning of the word that we learn, but the very process of holding the book in our hands, leafing through the pages and then arriving at a result, is itself a rewarding experience. This not only fosters knowledge, but also facilitates the creation of an elaborate network of association and interconnection within our brains. It provides a major stimulus to our thinking process, quite distinct from the isolated unconnected results thrown up by an internet search engine.

Our mind learns the best through association and through understanding the logic of sequential flow. The internet in a way has hampered this by randomised results and snapping the contextual linkage. When we look at a particular word in a dictionary we naturally take in the words that precede them and proceed. But such experience is absent in a web dictionary. This breaks the connection and hampers the flow.

In today’s world, the word research is almost synonymous with Google search. Libraries, rows of tables stacked with books, taking down notes on bits of papers, lending a library book seemed like another word. One has to just type in the key words and let algorithms do the work. This had made us less of thinkers and more of choosers. And even then if choosing seemed too daunting a task, then we have a new tribe called the influencers. They are our new-age friends, philosophers and guides who can advise us on anything under the sun.

From how to write a PhD thesis to the sunscreen to use, from how to make carrot cake to which mobile to buy, this world has lately become so crowded that now we have another set of influencers who advise us on which influencers to follow!

The attempt here is not to make a negative argument about the internet. In the twenty-first century, this is perhaps the best thing that has happened to man. But every new invention has its positives and negatives. The fire helped us to cook food but it had also burned down cities. So is also the case with nuclear energy. It all depends on finding a balance. That is, to use our mental faculties to separate the good from the bad. But the internet throws up a different kind of challenge because, left unchecked, it tends to impair the very mental faculties which at the first place built it. If not cautious it can rob us of our ability to think.

Research has shown that use of the internet heightens brain activity, especially the prefrontal cortex. This part is the seat of the consciousness and is used in making decisions. This may seem beneficial, because it activates multiple brain functions and sharpens decision-making capabilities. But there is a downside. Because web pages are a maze of hyperlinks. (They are links from a text document or an image to another location.)

Every time we encounter a hyperlink the brain asks the question, “To click or not to click”? While going through a text or a document we are interrupted to make those decisions. The result being most of our decision-making energy is frittered away and we rarely are able to go deep into a text. Consequently, information rarely becomes knowledge. And we emerge, not wiser but confused and lost.

As Nicholas Carr writes in his Pulitzer nominated book, Shallow: What internet is doing to our Brains. “The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments, may be imperceptible – our brains are quick – but it’s been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when repeated frequently.” Internet usage changes the neural pathway of the brain.

When we read, we take information from our “working memory” and fill our “long-term memory.” Neuroscientists have discovered that long-term memory isn’t just a storehouse of random facts, but it helps us to organise thoughts and concepts. But when we read on the internet, we transfer only jumble drops of data and not a continuous, coherent stream. Our brains don’t assimilate information in a rich and meaningful way. We simply become mindless consumers of data.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to make inroads into our lives. But it shouldn’t be a replacement for our ability to think. Human intelligence stands at the core of human strength. If we give this strength to a machine, it would no longer remain human.

In the United States, at the onset of COVID, people rushed to buy toilet papers. Psychologists are still grappling to explain this behaviour. There is no fun in using AI to dress the Pope in a swagged puffer white jacket, but the real fun begins when AI predicts exact rainfall patterns and drought and saves millions of people from starvation.