With the internet so ingrained in every aspect of our work and personal lives, our brains struggle to keep up. Many of us are accustomed to being online 24/7 and feel a sense of emptiness when we unplug. We need constant access to our followers, social media, and apps to feel connected.
It's no surprise that our growing dependence on this revolutionary technology is changing our thinking, especially for the Gen-Z population who grew up without realizing that an alternative world existed before them.
We're often unaware of the external forces that influence us internally, because they typically occur at a subconscious level. The same can be said of the technologies that have become ingrained in our lives, from television to the World Wide Web. Here are some key ways the internet has transformed our minds behind the scenes.
1) Enhancement of brain functions
Surfing the internet is much more complex than reading books, as it involves searching for what we want using search engines and jumping from one hyperlink to another. For this reason, when middle-aged and older participants were instructed to search the internet on specific topics assigned by the researchers, the brain activity of those who used the internet was found to be deeper than that of those who rarely or never used it.
The second brain study was conducted two weeks after the participants were asked to search the internet for an hour every day for seven days. Surprisingly, the inexperienced internet users now showed brain activity similar to that observed among participants who were already familiar with the internet.
The study proves that internet searching alone has the power to rewire our brains. Brain regions responsible for short-term memory and decision-making were activated during a second brain scan, indicating that internet use enhanced these specific brain functions.
If such a short period of online learning is all it takes to improve our cognitive abilities, just imagine how much more sophisticated our minds will be after years of exposure. And not just to search engines like Google, but also to social media and the wide range of interactive content available online. The exponential growth of user-generated content online over the past decade is definitive proof that we are becoming more creative.
2) Increased creative potential
The internet has given us all a voice in cyberspace and the ability to easily communicate with others, to the point where many of us compete with each other to be heard. Thanks to Facebook status updates, comments and subscriptions, uploading photos and videos, checking in on locations, and so on, we seem to have no compunction about our privacy, despite the privacy risks they bring.
The good news is that because we crave to become popular on social media and the internet in general, we inevitably become motivated to be more creative and original when we post online.
It's undeniable that our minds become more creative and inspired by watching millions of amazing videos on YouTube, clever quotes on social media pages, Twitter, and Facebook, and a ton of other cool ideas online. To come up with all this, the brain generated ideas, drew inspiration, and shared it with others.
3) Impact on self-esteem
The downside of this newfound online creative whirlwind is that some of us begin to feel insecure. We compare our lives to those of our friends based on what they post on social media and social networks. It's important to remember that these posts don't paint an accurate picture of our lives, as many of them are simply posing online to impress others. The result of such false comparisons is that we become overly envious of seemingly innocuous photos of people enjoying themselves, for example, on vacation.
The researchers found that a third of participants felt more negative after viewing their Facebook feed, especially those who only browsed the site and did not send any messages.
It seems that, at least for some of us, our brains have now unhealthily linked our social media use to our self-esteem. This is likely why we now hear about how compulsive Facebook use can cause depression and how people become addicted to it. In most of these disorders, the root cause of the problem stems from perceived social pressure and underlying self-esteem issues.
4) Reduction of attention
With the advent and proliferation of internet technology, our ability to sustain attention on a single subject has significantly diminished. Hyperlinks appear everywhere on the internet, forcing us to explore websites in a non-linear manner. Prolonged and repeated surfing, clicking one link after another, has conditioned our attention to only briefly scan the contents of each page before moving on to the next.
We often find ourselves searching for another topic that caught our attention before we've even finished half of what we were originally looking for. In fact, one of the biggest challenges blog owners face is how to keep online readers engaged with their content.
If you need proof that we're becoming impatient (at least online), check out these informative statistics on our attention spans and online behavior. The study found that our average attention span has dropped by more than 30%, from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013.
On average, office workers check their email inboxes 30 times per hour. It was also found that of 53,573 web page views, 17% lasted less than 4 seconds, while only 4% lasted more than 10 minutes! Keep this up, and we'll have trouble concentrating on anything, forcing us to multitask.
5) Encourage multitasking
Due to our diminished ability to sustain attention on a single task, we resort to multitasking, doing several things at once. My bet is that you're probably doing something other than reading this article right now: perhaps listening to music, chatting online, checking your Facebook and email inbox in separate tabs—or even surfing other websites.
With the advent of wearable smart devices, our minds have been rewired to only be stimulated when we are performing multiple tasks simultaneously.
While most people perceive multitasking as a more ideal time-saving option, negative effects emerge, manifesting in cognitive abilities actually outweighing productivity. Research has shown that multitasking actually divides our attention, leading to frequent distractions. It has been found that only a rare subset of the 2% population, known as supertaskers, perform better with multiple workloads.
6) Reprogram memory
In a 2011 study, psychologist Dr. Betsy Sparrow concluded that the World Wide Web now serves as "an external memory storage space, and you're responsible for remembering things." In a series of four memory experiments, participants were found to tend to think of computer terms like "Yahoo" or "Google" when asked simple questions.
They performed better at recalling trivial information when they thought they couldn't find it on the computer during a retest. When asked to enter this information into the computer and save it in different folders, the participants actually remembered the folder locations better than the operators themselves!
This study showed that the internet has become a form of transitive memory and, therefore, has changed the way we remember things. According to the hypothesis of one of the researchers in the aforementioned 1985 study, transactive memory refers to how we rely on others who are more knowledgeable about a particular subject to help us recall information.
Thanks to the internet, we're no longer limited by the human brain; we've entrusted our memory to the network, freeing ourselves to spend the rest of our time on creativity. Search engines like Google have become a gateway to accessing any information at any time.