Source: MBA Online
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Consider where the Internet was 15, 10 or even 5 years ago and you have to acknowledge that we witnessing a significant change in your culture and society.
I initially started writing this post several days ago and decided to give my frustration with this research time to subside. Even though I have giving this a few nights I am still annoyed because these researcher are missing a fundamental point about what media and the Internet really are. The post is actually called “Going 24 Hours Without Media” and if you look at the 15 surprising facts they do make sense in context of highlighting how students feel when they have to give up their “media”. The notion of being addicted to the Internet or to media is also reasonable if you hold that we just use the Internet to consume media.
This is where I vehemently disagree with the researchers and anyone else who posits that the Internet is really just about media consumption. I would argue that this a classic NOOB (newbie) error and while I respect the intent of the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda I think they are either making a NOOB error by positing that the Internet is used for primarily for media consumption or they are very wise marketers who know how to get the biggest response to their work by leveraging the “addicted to the internet/media” angle. To clarify, a newbie is someone who over enthusiastically embraces only parts or limited aspects of a system while missing the power of the whole. Seeing the Internet primarily as media delivery platform extremely limits the power and potential of the Internet and really misses what the Internet really is–a communication platform.
So if you understand the Internet and the media that exists in it as part of our global communication platform/system then asking students to not communicate with each other for 24 wouldn’t even be considered because we are social beings and we know how important communication really is. If we want to be isolated we go backpacking for the weekend and leave our cell phones behind. It is good to get away from the “noise” of the world but that was not the intent of this study. They were really asking students to give up communication so should we really be surprised by the results? I suggest not. How would you feel if you were asked to give up communicating for 24 hours?
In moving from US to the Canada recently I went nearly a week without a cell phone, texting and ubiquitous Internet access that I am normally accustomed to. While I don’t consider myself addicted to media and I do rely heavily on being able to communicate with everyone when I need to and not having that ability was very unsettling. Was it unsettling because I am addicted to the Internet–NO! It was unsettling because I had to function in an uninformed fashion. I was making choices and decisions without having full access to all the information sources that I generally use.
In 20 or may even as few as 15 years from now we will look back at research studies like this and chuckle at the naive questions that were being asked. The Internet and the wide assortment of media and related tools make up our newest form of communication. By our very natures, humans are social beings so the idea of being addicted to communicating or being social is nonsensical.
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Viewing this youtube video makes me reflect on a response I had written shortly after Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article was released in July of 2008.
In the Atlantic Monthly article Is Google Making Us Stupid Nicholas Carr states:
My mind isn’t going-so far as I can tell-but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
Carr is simply restating, or applying to adults, Jane Healy’s argument put forward in her 1990 book Endangered Minds, and expanded in the 1998 book, Failure to Connect.
Healy argues that children’s increasing exposure to computers has created a “toxic environment” that leads to patterns of “disorganized thinking” and “mental restlessness” akin to ADHD.
While I will concede the Net is rife with “toxic content” and I often do agree with what Carr writes, I am not willing to agree with him on this point. In the two weeks from when I first read this article to when I started this response I have read 2 complete books and am several chapters into several more; I have also read at least 10 full articles from peer reviewed journals and my usual fair of daily Blog posts. One of the books I recently received as a gift didn’t make it past the afternoon before I thoroughly devoured it and marked all the key sections for a later review-no concentration drift there.
There are some parts of Carr’s article I do agree with. I also find my concentration starting to drift after two or three pages or sometimes even after two or three paragraphs, but I will attribute this drift to the quality or type of the content that I am reading. If the book, article or Blog is well written and the author genuinely has something valuable to say, there is no problem staying engaged.
There is also a style of academic writing that is of such “high quality” that I find myself curling up with a good dictionary rather than a “good book”. With this type of writing, the chances of even getting engaged are pre-empted by repeated trips to dictionary.com or a traditional Websters and the need to determine if the author is referring to the connotative or denotative meaning of a word.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of an Internet infused world is the immense volume of available information. For example, many people have already commented on Carr’s article in the Blogosphere and most will simply repeat the highlights or provide a basic review-some will even review the reviews, so staying engaged while wading through all the chaff can be challenging.
Google doesn’t have to make you stupid if you use it wisely to sort through all the chaff. However, if you rely solely on the first hits you find with Google then you are just being stupid because Google should only be used as a starting point (just as wikipedia). You can’t blame Google or the Internet for your lack of effort and discernment
