This Is Your Brain on the Internet (Maybe)

Headlines like “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or “Is the Internet Making Us Dumber?” quite clearly show that people are concerned about what the Internet is doing to our cognition. Some have speculated that the Internet has become a kind of external hard drive for our brains, eliminating our need to really learn or process information. Others point to the obvious advantages of having more information available to more people than at any other time in history. As our lives become increasingly wired, we are now stepping back to see just how deep down the connections go. In the late 1980s, communication researchers began shifting to a view of human communication that was more cognitively based. Out of this shift came a few now very successful theories that sought to describe how we seek and process information. One of the most widely applicable theories to come out of this “cognitive ...