Internet Content in Crisis: Are We Becoming Mental Grasshoppers?

Is the Internet turning us into a race of mental grasshoppers, hopping from leaf to leaf, unable to focus attention on one thing for more than a few seconds?

Unbroken blocks of text are not unknown on the web; but the most popular—and for many people, the most useful—sites present collections of graphics and text fragments, studded with links. Links help you to pick your own path through a complex mass of information, but they also distract you, tempt you into pointless digression, and break the coherence of your thought. Constantly nibbling at multiple information feeds, you can’t see the tree for the leaves, let alone see the wood for the trees.

Does it matter? Some say that the world today needs grasshoppers: modern life is fast-paced and multitasking, and versatility and quickness are valued above old-fashioned dedication to one task.

Others say that intellectual and social advance depends on deep thinkers who are not content to skip nimbly from leaf to leaf. Charles Darwin spent 22 years working on his theory of evolution before he published The Origin of Species in 1859. Isaac Newton, asked how he had made the discoveries that laid the foundation of the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century, famously replied “I keep the subject constantly before me and wait until the first dawnings open little by little into full light.”

Experimental evidence suggests that the ever shorter attention span encouraged by the internet and television can alter brain structure and damage our individual capacities for concentrated thought and the deeper insights it can bring. By instilling the habits of mental grasshoppers in ourselves and our children we may be diminishing the pool of potential Newtons and Darwins, and so reducing our ability to address the fundamental intellectual and social problems of today and tomorrow.

Footnote: To help you concentrate, this article was limited to 306 words and contains no hyperlinks.

Comments

[bluesmoke:]

The world of information, and indeed life, is speeding up. It's like flying an airplane and there's no time to read all the gauges. People get caught up in the exhilaration of the experience. I have found I do my best thinking in the middle of the night, when I'm in bed and my brain has time to process it all!

2008 Jul 06 10:43 AM

[fxtrader07:]

great short article on the counter-productivity of the information flood and the internet. the modern media and communication facilities make us all so more procutive, don't they? Yes and No. They speed up things but very often at the expense of quality. Often things get taken unchecked and unquestioned leading to the blind copying of ideas and inputs and to a herd-mentality of thinking, arguing and vision. Strictly limitingand constantly monitoring and controlling one's moves through the jungles of information and mis-information, of facts, fiction, deception and information overkill will be more essential then ever.

2008 Jul 07 05:33 AM

[Tom B:]

The increasing speed of change is much bigger problem than allegedly shortening attention spans. I am in a highly specialized technical field. It took me years to learn. When I started, DIFFERENT fields were considered "hot'. Having done my job a long time, my field *may* be in decline. There is mis-match between human time scales and the pace of change. What will work look like in 20 years? Automation is increasing. People are trying to outsource higher-end jobs to the 3rd world, but the 3rd world will never have a US-style life-style, because global resources are limited. We we learn to greatly extend life span, as Ray Kurzweil hopes? Will we turn to mental enhancement techniques-- drugs, meditation, brain/computer interfaces?

2008 Jul 07 08:51 AM

[GregY:]

There is in article in last month "Atlantic Monthly" which is called "Does Google makes us stupid?". I will not provide the link, the "old school", so those who complain about speed of change, have time to catch up. It is a change, and whenever there is a change, there are people who question it and complain about it. Some turn to external sources to deal with it (drugs, protests, etc.) and some get more focused, mentally disciplined and evolve yet again, as Darwin proposed.

2008 Jul 07 11:40 AM

[Scott Berry:]

Couldn't resist here. Individual people don't "evolve" to cope with anything, at least not in a Darwinian sense. But the misconception that we do is exactly the kind of thing an absence of deep thinking and rigorous evaluation can lead to.

I disagree with much of the "google..stupid" article. If people are losing their ability to concentrate and focus because of information snacking, then go read a few books instead. It'll come back, just as exercise and diet will overcome a habit of poor nutritional snacking.

It's clearly a change in the way (much) of the world operates. The key is to understand the new environment, and adapt to how *other* people are changing.

2008 Jul 08 06:34 PM

[cheree franco:]

just wondering...what is this "experimental evidence" that you reference? i'm trying to research the subject and keep coming up with vague claims and no valid evidence.

2008 Nov 02 05:04 PM

[Ralph F:]

Similar comment from Antonio Rodriguez, an HP visionary:

Blogs as junkfood for the brain
theonda.org/articles/2...

Jan 05 05:44 PM

[Michael Jac...:]

Firm experimental evidence [1] chiefly concerns TV watching: young children who watch a lot of TV are more likely to suffer from low attention span. Informal evidence [2] from schoolteachers confirms these results.

Extrapolation from TV watching to the use of typical internet sites is not well established, but surely plausible. Evidence [3] that internet users read very little of each web page visited strongly suggests that prolonged concentrated attention is rare.

The effect of TV watching and internet surfing is crucial in the years of childhood and youth when the brain is being formed and fundamental skills acquired: the danger is to young people for whom TV and the internet are the first formative influences. If you don't learn to talk in early childhood you will never learn to talk. Perhaps learning to concentrate for a prolonged period is similarly, though less dramatically, constrained.

Past changes (such as writing, printing, and portable books) have been beneficial to human intellectual life. So any present or foreseeable change must also be beneficial? The conclusion may be true, but the argument is a non sequitur.

[1] See, for example, "Christakis D A, Zimmerman F J, DiGiuseppe D L, McCarty C (2004); Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. In Pediatrics 113,4 pp708-13"; also "Dorothy G Singer; To watch or not to watch. In Televizion Research 20/2007, pp20-24".

[2] See, for example, "Jane M Healy; Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It; New Horizons for Learning, 1991".

[3] See, for example, "Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 6, 2008:" at www.useit.com/alertbox....

Jan 06 02:12 AM