To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, discussion questions, and ways to take action on the issue of whether the Internet is having a negative impact on society, go to ProCon.org.
In a 2008 article for The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr asked, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr argued that the internet as a whole, not just Google, has been “chipping away [at his] capacity for concentration and contemplation.” He was concerned that the internet was “reprogramming us.”
However, Carr also noted that we should “be skeptical of [his] skepticism,” because maybe he’s “just a worrywart.” He explained, “Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine.”
The article, and Carr’s subsequent book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010, revised in 2020), ignited a continuing debate on and off the internet about how the medium is changing the ways we think, how we interact with text and each other, and the very fabric of society as a whole.
Pro
- The speed and ubiquity of the internet is different from previous breakthrough technologies and is reprogramming our brains for the worse.
- IQ scores have been falling for decades, coinciding with the rise of technologies, including the internet.
- The internet is causing us to lose the ability to perform simple tasks.
Con
- Virtually all new technologies, the internet included, have been feared, and those fears have been largely unfounded.
- The internet gives diverse populations of people more equal access to information and society.
- Changing how the brain works and how we access and process information is not automatically negative.
This article was published on January 21, 2022, at Britannica’s ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source. Go to ProCon.org to learn more.