My Personal Reflections on The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr

Every new medium changes us. Marshall McLuhan, an author in the 1960s, recognized that we sometimes get so caught up in the content or messages coming through new mediums that we fail to notice that the medium itself is changing us in different ways.

When I first started reading Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, I have to admit that I brought into the reading my own personal experiences of reading fewer books (except books for class, of course!) and skipping longer articles and instead looking for snippets or a brief synopsis of an article. I’ve noticed that more news outlets now put bullet-points of the main points of an article below the headline or title, but I hadn’t really considered that I was personally guilty of reading just the highlights until I started reading this book and began to reflect on my reading habits of late. I recognize that time to read has become a luxury - I am very busy, with my daughters and their homework and activities, my 3rd-grade-teacher job and its requirements, and the Designing Digital Literacy in Schools (DDLS) program and its assignments, on top of all of the things I need to do to keep my house from falling down or getting buried under a pile of laundry. However, when I finally got a chance to read this book, I struggled to focus and get into the book. Interestingly, the author described a similar experience of struggling to focus when he was reading, and then highlighted several other people with the same issue. Some people didn’t necessarily think that was a negative thing, though I must confess that I have very fond memories of curling up with a book and reading for hours, immersed in the words written by many different authors. I miss that focused reading time.

I usually just attributed my lack of reading to a scarcity of personal time, which is not totally out of the question. Many of us are quite overscheduled and find ourselves running all over the place, bringing work wherever we happen to be going. However, Mr. Carr focuses a lens on how the advent of the Internet and how all of the information available on the Web 24/7 has been demonstrated to be an effective distractor, which may actually be changing the structure of our brains and how we think, recall, and process information. This book spends several chapters discussing the history of brain research and the understanding of how our brains work to make connections, memories, and understanding. This took me right back to my undergraduate courses in psychology and biobehavioral health, though for a while, I struggled to focus since it felt like long chapters of history. As I was reading, I took the book everywhere I went, in the chance I could find some time to read and jot my thoughts on sticky notes stuck throughout the book. The book title definitely piqued interest in people I met, so I had the opportunity to discuss the concepts about which I was reading, which helped me understand and process my own ideas. This harkens back to our class discussions about Lev Vygotsky and how talking things out (even to ourselves) helps us learn and remember. Through these conversations, I learned that many of us, especially those of us with our own children or who work with kids, are concerned about how technology and the Internet are affecting not only ourselves, but especially the children’s developing brains.

In previous classes in this George Mason University DDLS program, we have discussed information overload, and Dr. Norton suggested it isn’t necessarily overload, but that we are not efficient information processors or filters. We have so much visual and auditory stimuli barraging us at all times that we just stop processing and skim, or flit from thing to thing. Fortunately and unfortunately, our brains have been proven throughout research across the centuries to be very plastic, able to learn new skills, information, and processes when needed. This is good for many reasons, such as recovering from injury or needing to learn new job skills or information. This is also bad because when we teach our brains bad habits or don’t use them wisely, our brains learn from that, as well. “Every time we use the Web, we train our brain to be distracted - to process information very quickly and efficiently, but without sustained attention. Memory consolidation can’t even get started because our working memory gets overloaded” with all of the information and stimuli on the webpage.

“It would be rash to jump to the conclusion that the Internet is undermining our moral sense. It would not be rash to suggest that as the Net reroutes our vital paths and diminishes our capacity for contemplation, it is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts.” One of the points that I initially thought the author was reaching for was that we are potentially becoming less-empathetic people, but once I understood the argument that we need to deeply process feelings, ideas, and emotions to truly be empathetic, I understood where he was coming from. With our brains less-practiced or less capable of thinking and processing deeply, we will not going to be able to understand what other people are experiencing. He also brings into this discussion the idea of people losing the ability to be ethical decision-makers for a similar reason. While reading, I was again reminded of the first semester of DDLS, when we focused on the PICKLE (problem-solving, information-using, community-participating, knowledge-using, literate, ethical-decision-makers), or skills we need to teach our students to be successful members of our culture. So many of the PICKLE skills are tied into the effects researchers are seeing in their studies on Internet-use on brains.

Each time we learn something, our brains neurons and synapses make new connections, and every time we recall something, those connections become stronger and therefore, our memories become stronger. I am “old-school” and still have a road atlas in my car. I use the map to get a “big picture” in my head of my location. Once I have a foundation, I can quickly learn my way around new places because I can see the “map in my head” - I can see how things are connected and where things are in relation to others. I think my comprehension of geography and location is pretty strong. I know people who rely on their GPS or phone maps to tell them every turn, even for local places they have been many times. I wonder if they have any concept of where they are in relation to other places they know. How would they survive without a GPS? Is this evidence of our brains and their connections atrophying because we’re relying on an external decision-making map to tell us where to go? I’ve found I used to know everyone’s phone numbers by heart because we had to either write it down or remember it. Now, I don’t think I could tell you my own sister’s phone number. It’s saved in my phone, so I don’t need to remember it, though I seriously remember the numbers of most of my elementary-school friends.

There have been studies that demonstrate the benefit of processing time, where brains need a break from thinking about problems. We need unconscious thinking time to problem-solve. I’ve noticed this with puzzles and other games - when I take a break and come back to it later (“sleep on it”), I am much better and quicker at solving them. Research has shown that distractions online keep our brains from this purposeful (processing or thinking-time) distraction. According to Carr and his research, we are losing the ability (and possibly willingness) to take a step back and take time to process for a thorough solution. In the age of instant messages, news, videos, tweets, and everything else, our culture does not encourage individuals to take time to think or process a response or solution. I am reminded of reading The Victorian Internet and the invention of the telegraph and how much that changed so much more than communication! The Internet is doing the same thing, but now we can study and see how it is affecting our brains!

As with just about everything in life, I feel that there is a need for moderation - most things in moderation are not terrible for you. Our use of the Internet has overtaken our lives, with our refrigerators, cars, phones, and watches finding ways to be connected, so we feel the need to be connected all of the time. With that connection comes the urge to be checking or connected at all times 24/7, and that bombardment with stimulation is definitely changing our brains and how we think. A shorter attention span and struggling to read a full book cover to cover are symptoms of a larger, concerning issue. We are training our brains to be distracted. As Nicholas Carr suggested, we need to be “wary of what our devices are doing to us.”