• Tweet
• Sharebar

This morning, after you had your coffee, checked the scores from last night’s basketball game, and posted your status about how much you hate shoveling snow on Facebook and Twitter, did you stop to consider that such activities may have increased your intelligence? Could you sense the neuron activity increasing, as information flowed through your body, energizing you for the new day? No? Perhaps you were distracted by the latest news from TMZ and didn’t notice.

Nevertheless, there are some who would argue that just by having access to the Internet, regardless of how much of that time you spend trading livestock on FarmVille, you are at least in a position to increase your intelligence beyond those who do not have access. Simply put, the Internet makes you smarter, and not having access is like not being able to read 30 years ago.

Over the past decade, local and federal governments around the world have spent millions attempting to bring Internet access to homes that have none, mostly in low income areas. As would be expected there is a large economic gap between those who have Internet access and those who do not. The concept even has a name. They call it the Digital Divide, and politicians have argued, sometimes fiercely, over whether it is worth government money to bridge the gap. Some have even gone as far as promising complete access to all citizens by given time periods.

The general assumption with all of these claims is that the Internet is somehow beneficial to people, and those without it are at a disadvantage. A few educational studies, in particular, have concluded that students from low income families that have Internet connections increase their GPA’s and are, therefore, smarter once they have access. The comprehensive study (PDF) by Dr. Linda A. Jackson of Michigan State University, is a prime example.

When educators need funding for technology, they often turn to these studies to justify their spending. The reality, however, is that most scholars of education also conclude that the way in which technology is used greatly affects the academic benefits or lack thereof. Furthermore, as managed server experts at 34SP.com explained, reducing funding for educational necessities, while increasing funding for technology, devalues the effectiveness of the technology. After all, one cannot assume that a teacher who gives students access to the Internet will actually use it as part of a lesson, rather than to reward good behavior or provide isolated computer skills training without curriculum integration.

Dumb and Dumber

On the other side of the spectrum are analysts and thinkers who contend the Internet is actually making us dumber, and that using it is literally reshaping our minds into blobs of stupidity. One man in particular, Nicholas Carr, contends that the Internet is making us stupid and even published a book, called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, to drive his point home.

The devouring of flashy tidbits of information, rapidly switching between documents (including the 10 browser tabs I currently have open), and the “mental juggling”, as he calls it, all result in weaknesses of “higher-order cognitive process” There is, after all, an assumption that Internet users multitask, and multitasking, by its very nature, decreases performance. We are essentially distracting ourselves into mindless, mouse-clicking drones.

According to Dr. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Harvard, Carr is preaching fear to convince us we are getting stupid. The argument that our brains are changing because of the Internet is not in dispute, Pinker argues, because the concept of experience rewiring the brain is not a new one. But the assumption that this is negative is not necessarily valid. The same argument was made with the advent of the printing press, paperback books, and even television, yet those fear-stirring claims proved to be false.

The Real Answer

The truth is that there is no strong evidence suggesting the Internet somehow makes us less intelligent, but that was not our initial question anyway. The real question was: Does the Internet make us smarter?

A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, suggests that the most influential people in society: scholars, business executives, and government officials, think it does. The non-random sample of respondents ranged from Harvard professors to IBM business executives.

Still, one could argue the survey’s respondents presumably use the Internet and are thus already dumber without even realizing it. If that is the case, the only way to really know the answer is to test the intelligence of Amish families, monks, and isolated tribal villagers to find out if they have become smarter than the rest of us. It is then that we might realize our definition of “smart” is itself suspect at best.

That line of questioning ultimately leads back to where we began. When a study concludes that families that have dinner together are more cohesive and emotionally healthier than those who do not, few would argue it is the food that makes them stronger, rather than the conversation, sharing of ideas, and loving gestures of kindness. An abused child forced to sit at a dinner table and face the abusers is probably not going to benefit from it.

In this world of new media, the Internet is only the food. It is a new way of processing and delivering something as old as human existence: information. If the information itself is sound, there is no doubt that people will be better informed and may increase their knowledge. If, however, the information is low quality and devoid of intellectual value, people who access it may cause themselves and society harm. The difference between the Internet and ancient messenger birds is speed and volume rather than quality of information.

Now, let me get back to Twitter.

Author Byline:

Tavis J. Hampton is a librarian and writer with a decade of experience in information technology, web hosting, and Linux system administration. His freelance services include writing, editing, tech training, and information architecture.