Is the Internet Making Us Smarter or Dumber?

Haylee Dussault

            As I am reading the Shallows by Nicholas Carr, it is quite clear that he believes that Internet use may be making the brain decline in important areas, or in other words the Internet may in fact be making the human brain “dumber” as a whole.  Although some studies have contradicted Carr’s findings with other opinions and facts for the technological effect on the brain. For example, James Flynn argues that technology may in fact make the brain smarter, as he refers to research by Don Tapscott in Grown Up Digital, states, “raw IQ scores have been going up three points a decade since World War II.” Although Carr has his own opinion on this, and uses other studies to back it up, making it confusing to realize whether the Internet is making us smarter or dumber.

Carr completely gives credit to Don Tapscott for the statistic on rising IQ scores, because he states that this is in fact the truth and IQ scores have been rising, but he does not completely agree with the cause that James Flynn believes is making these scores sky rocket. He breaks apart Tapscott’s statistic, and focuses on the section that says “since World War II.” After thoroughly examining this quote, Carr states, “That pattern suggests that the rise probably reflects a deep and persistent change in some aspect of society rather than any particular recent event or technology.”  He realizes that technology was not so advanced in the time period of World War II, and therefore this is probably not the cause of inflating IQ scores.

Carr also gives the statistic that “from 1999 to 2008, a time when Net use in homes and schools was expanding dramatically,” which he uses to talk about the fact that the PSAT scores have actually stayed the same in this time period, a period of large Internet use. Now there are two different tests, the PSAT’s and the IQ test, that are being examined. Each may or may not have been affected by Internet use, and it is really hard to tell based on the information given in the book. I do not think that there is a definitive answer on whether or not the internet actually makes a person smarter or dumber. I think it depends on how much the person lets the Internet actually control their life, and if Internet usage actually takes away from the time they could be using learning other things. Carr’s view could be seen as biased towards the argument that the Internet is making humans dumber because he chooses to look at sources to support his argument whereas other sources have completely different views on this. Therefore you cannot exactly take Carr’s ideas as completely factual on whether or not the human brain is becoming smarter or dumber. I feel that there never will be a true answer. The answer is in fact what you let the Internet do to you, not what the Internet does to you on its own.