In some cases the use of the internet can have a positive effect on how you think because access to endless amounts of information can help if you are reading the right content and it is disclosing useful information. If you are brought up using the internet to answer all your questions you will only rely on the internet and eventually you will give up on your ability to think for yourself. So the effects that it was have on the mind of a child could be terrible if the internet is used in the wrong way.
When someone is hanging out with their friends or they are by themselves and a question comes up and they ask themselves or others what the answer is and nobody knows the first instinct of that person is to open there phone or computer and go right to google and get an answer. This is talked about in the article ” is google making us stupid”. the article goes over things like how we aren’t able read into things deeply because things like google give us a direct answer in seconds and don’t allow us to think deeply and come up with an answer on our own. “Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr 333). Nicholas Carr uses this quote to explain how not digging deep into readings in only scratching the surface of the readings and the information in them. So when growing up if a person is a curious type of kid they would simply just rely on google for answers and eventually they will lose there ability to think on there own.
Other ways the internet can affect a person’s childhood is that it can give them a false sense of security. In the article “Faux Friends” the author goes into depth about the connections people think that they make with others on websites like facebook. On facebook you can literally be “friends” with anyone anywhere. But just because you sent them a friends request on some website does not mean that you actually know them so it gives them a false sense of pride. “Are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction” (Deresiewicz 372).
Deresiewicz uses this quote to expand on the relationships that people have now are not really real just that people perceive them to be real when in reality they are just a way you can pass the time. When children start to use social media they send thousands of friend request a day and they gain that false sense of security and it eventually leads them down a path that they don’t actually know how to interact with others in real life because they are doing it on the internet so much they lose all social skill. In “the human cost of an illiterate society” author Jonathan Kozol talks about how society is becoming illiterate. When Kozol says that society is becoming illiterate he does not mean that they can’t read and write, he means that as society becomes more dependant on technology that we lose all ability to do things on your own because of things like the internet. Being able to learn to think on your own is a huge part of a person’s childhood. “This panic is not so different from the misery that millions of adult illiterates experience each day within the course of their routine existence in the U.
S.A” (206). Kozol uses this quote to explain the impact that having to skim through readings has had on our country and how the cost of our society becoming illiterate is affecting us as a whole.
Having to skim through readings is big part of how being able to think on your feet is a skill that is almost dying off in society. Being able to think on your own and on your feet sparks an ability to be creative and without creativity during a person’s childhood it causes them to become almost like robots.That is how in some cases the use of the internet can have a positive effect on how you think because access to endless amounts of information and in other cases it can have a negative effect on a person’s childhood.
