How Does Internet Affect Our Intelligence?

How does Internet Affect Our Intelligence?

The 21st century belongs to the era of computers and the Internet. With the development of the times and society, the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in people’s lives. People also use a variety of interconnected tools and can obtain relevant knowledge and information they need anytime and anywhere in any place with the Internet. Undoubtedly, the development of science and technology is a kind of progress for mankind. However, from another perspective, this does not seem to be the case. Now the Internet is more and more developed, human beings are more and more lazy, and their cognitive ability is weakened. The emergence of Internet search engines has impacted people’s way of thinking, and people’s way of memory is also changing. The Internet is destroying people’s cognitive ability and ability to engage in abstract critical thinking. So how does the Internet affect people’s intelligence? I hold the view that the Internet will promote the development of human intelligence.

In the first place, the innovation and replacement of the Internet is a sign of people’s intellectual development. It can be seen from the history of science that every major technological change in human society will lead to a scientific revolution in a new field. The impact of the Internet revolution on human beings has far exceeded that of the Great Industrial Revolution. Unlike the industrial revolution, Internet revolution strengthened human power and vision, and enhanced human intelligence. Therefore, as a product of high technology, the Internet is the crystallization of historical development, social progress and human wisdom. It is the information center with the largest capacity, the most extensive content and the fastest transmission speed that human beings have so far. Internet use as an information and communication tool has spread to new areas; and has also become a major family management tool. It will become an indispensable partner in our life (Hoffman, Novak & Venkatesh, 2004). These are all realized through human brains and wisdom. Therefore, people will only make the Internet more intelligent and continue to benefit the development of mankind.

Secondly, the Internet can meet people’s growing cognitive needs to a great extent. When the Internet is embedded in our life world, it soon becomes an integral part of our life and a brand new world to meet people’s cognitive needs. Cognitive needs originally belong to the needs of people at a higher level. However, in the rapidly changing times and increasingly complex society, cognitive needs have become a basic need of people. In the era, people are in the sea where all kinds of information meet. In order to identify certain information and eliminate uncertainty, other information is needed to assist. The Internet can precisely meet people’s increasing cognitive needs to a great extent. Just as Weinberger (2016) confirmed, the emergence of the Internet makes it easier and faster for people to explore new and unknown areas. He (2016) also mentioned that it is because of the Internet that the threshold for people to learn and explore knowledge and information has been lowered to the amount of movement of your clicking finger. In a certain sense, the Internet is like a huge, open, flat, very convenient library that provides new knowledge. People can search for the knowledge or information they need anytime and anywhere, which can promote people’s growing cognitive needs greatly.

Furthermore, the Internet is changing people’s way of thinking and making people smarter. In essence, the Internet cognitive revolution is a profound change in the way of thinking such as human thoughts, concepts, thoughts and consciousness. The essence of the cognitive revolution lies in the fact that human beings have learned to share, believe and cooperate together. The Internet cognitive revolution provides rapid interactive iteration of various kinds of information, providing possibilities for joint cooperation and even joint actions. In the Internet era, the new man-machine combination has replaced the original system, which was dominated by individuals. Both human brain and computer are tools of information processing. Let’s take teenagers for instance. Their mastery of information technology is not a skill, but a kind of accomplishment. They are the aborigines in the information age. They have different ways of thinking. It is natural to use computers and fast networks. They naturally adapt to technology and its rules in the process of adapting to the information environment. In addition, Badke’s (2010) found that subjects who have just come into contact with the Internet have fewer dorsolateral prefrontal cortex than those who have used the Internet for a long time, which is an area that integrates different data using short-term memory. In this process of adaptation, people have acquired a technical way of thinking. This basic way of thinking determines the basic behavior of students in their future life, determines their future development, and determines whether students can adapt to the development of the social era. What’s more, the results show that the development of Internet plays an important role in improving the quality of higher education (Qiang Chen & Yi Fan, 2018).

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Note: From “Research On The Impact Of Internet Development On The Quality Of China’s Higher Education”.

Figure 1 shows that from 2010 to 2016, the development speed of China’s Internet has maintained an upward trend. Figure 2 shows that the quality of higher education in China has greatly improved. Therefore, we can see that the development of China’s Internet has had a significant positive impact on the quality of China’s higher education in recent years. Therefore, the Internet is changing the way of thinking of human beings, making them smarter and more adaptable to this rapidly developing society.

However, some people think that the Internet, as a new tool, has brought about technological innovation, changed the past life, and at the same time made many people lazy. People can get a lot of information very quickly and master a lot of technologies easily. Therefore, the Internet makes people lazy in thinking, which makes people more and more stupid. Moreover, Carr (2008) claimed “what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation”(57). He (2008) specifically pointed out that his mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles”(57). What’s more, Kail’s research (2010) also mentioned that in this era of rapid technological development, the human brain is constantly being reshaped by intelligent technology. In the past, when there was no computer or network, people’s lives were not convenient enough, but their minds had a great deal of knowledge and survival skills. However, the emergence of new technologies has stifled this talent of mankind.