Today it is no secret to anyone that the Internet has changed not only our society, but to some extent each of us. Spending time online decreases the ability to focus on one task at a time, according to a recently published study in the journal World Psychiatry. This means that we no longer store facts in memory. It turns out that not only our life has changed forever thanks to access to an infinite amount of information, but also the way the brain works. In the course of the study, scientists from the UK, USA and Australia came to a number of surprising findings. Thus, the influence of the World Wide Web on the brain is noted in three areas: attention, memory and social interaction.
As one of the study's authors, Professor Jerome Sarris, told Medical News Today, the online world could have far-reaching consequences. However, before delving into the series of changes that have occurred with the advent of the Internet, it should be borne in mind that the Internet is "inevitable, ubiquitous and is a highly functional aspect of modern life." The study found that people who regularly perform a large and varied number of tasks on the Internet, checking social media profiles or updating streaming services along the way, struggle to focus on one task.
The bombardment of incentives over the Internet and the resulting split attention is a series of challenges, according to the researchers. The authors of the work do not exclude that by gradually changing both the structure and functioning of the brain, the Internet has the potential to change our social structure. For example, spending time on the Internet from smartphones and laptops means that many of us have developed "test" behaviors - when the user regularly looks at his phone, but only for short periods of time. This unrestricted stream of requests and notifications from the Internet prompts us to constantly split attention, which in turn can reduce our ability to maintain focus on single tasks.
The Internet is changing our memory and social interactions
Another aspect addressed in the study is memory and our dependence on the Internet as a source of information. People are less likely to remember information and are more dependent on the Internet, but researchers have suggested that this may help "release" intellectual power that can be used for more ambitious endeavors than was possible. Finally, the paper explores the differences between online and offline social interaction: although thanks to such social networks as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, people interact with a large number of users, the number of friends in real life for each of us has practically not changed.
Thus, with the advent of the Internet, we have changed ourselves and the way we communicate with other people. In this new world that science fiction writers have not predicted, one of the most important skills is the ability to verify information and think critically. Perhaps we should also train our memory and memorize truly important and valuable information, and not search for it in search engines.
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Lyubov Sokovikova