PRE-READING QUESTIONS
Think about the following questions.
1. How often do you use the internet to look up facts you are just curious about?
2. Have you ever been certain of a fact, only to find out you were wrong after looking it up on the internet?
3. Are you concerned about how much time you spend on the internet? Why or why not?

IS THE INTERNET RUINING YOUR MEMORY?

A prominent educator once warned that a popular new technology was becoming a crutch¹, with a negative impact on his students' memories. That educator was Socrates, and the new technology he disliked was writing-on wax tablets and papyrus scrolls, to be exact. The great orators² of his time delivered memorized speeches without notes. Socrates saw writing as a threat to that tradition, and by extension, those mental faculties. Or so reported his student Plato in Phaedrus, anyway. True to his word, Socrates himself stubbornly³ refused to write his thoughts down. It's no great leap, therefore, to suppose Socrates would similarly disapprove of the internet today. His attitude is echoed in growing concerns that the internet is changing our brains. Many of these concerns center on the so-called "Google effect," which is believed by some researchers and a growing number of journalists to have an adverse effect on our memories.

At the heart of specific concerns about memory is a study authored by psychologist Betsy Sparrow. It was published in 2011 as "Google Effects on Memory" in the journal Science. In experiments at Harvard University, Sparrow's team found that subjects exposed to detailed, trivial⁴ information were more likely to forget it if told they could look it up online later. Subjects also tended to include the internet among their own cognitive tools. It was as if the computer were part of their intellectual abilities. Hence, Sparrow concluded, the internet has become a central player in our "transactive memory." This is the sharing of information retention⁵ among persons-or in this case, digital networks-in a group. In short, Google has become everyone's brainy friend, the "walking encyclopedia." Sparrow hypothesized this may have far-reaching effects on the way we think and perhaps even the physiology of our brains.

Critics of the study and of many of the other "Google effect" articles that followed it point out what they see as significant flaws⁶. The first is the questionable validity of the assumption that forgetting something because we can google it later is any different from forgetting a phone number immediately after writing it down. The same study showed that frequent internet users were adept⁷ at remembering where to find information, if not the information itself. Moreover, Sparrow herself admits that transactive memory is nothing new. Long before Google, we had libraries with librarians and card catalogs to direct our searches.

Is there proof that our memories are, in fact, getting worse because of internet search engines or that relying on them rather than the library has demonstrable physiological effects? So far, cognitive neuroscience has revealed no such data. And in the US, a country with one of the highest internet usage rates, average IQ scores continue to steadily rise three points per decade. Standard tests of IQ measure fluid working memory and long-term retention. It may be too soon for a quantifiable negative effect to emerge, but until it does, the sticklers⁸ for evidence will likely remain unconvinced. "Such panics often fail basic reality checks," the Harvard University research psychologist Steven Pinker states in a New York Times article on the subject. "The effects of consuming electronic media are... likely to be far more limited than the panic implies."

What we do know about the plasticity-or changeability-of human memory should make us think twice about placing it in such high esteem. Recent findings in neuroscience have proven that we alter memories every time we access them. Therefore, even the most accurate memory is subject to plasticity; over time, connected memories will change each other. This highlights the difference between accessibility and accuracy: some humans may recall information well, but plasticity will affect the accuracy of that information over time. The internet, by contrast, is not subject to plasticity. That does not mean the information is static, however. It's constantly being fact-checked and updated, with a cumulative⁹ effect that's mostly positive, low-quality online content notwithstanding¹⁰.

There may be sociological consequences of Google's power as the main "keeper" of information. But internet users aren't really consulting Google. They're using it as a tool to access the same scientific journals and respected news sources they might find in the library—if they had all sorts of spare time.

• to forget information
• the average IQ
• ability to remember
• less accurate
• internet's effects
• our transactive memory

• adverse
• cognitive
• static
• faculty
• impact
• validity

The Inventor of Internet Addiction?

Dr. Ivan K. Goldberg, a psychiatrist and clinical psychopharmacologist, came up with the term "internet addiction" in 1995. But he never thought anyone would take him seriously. In fact, he said the disorder didn't really exist. In 1986, Goldberg created an online club for psychiatrists called PsyCom.net and often browsed the site for news and messages. While reading the messages posted on the site's bulletin boards, he came up with the idea of posting a message to poke fun at the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the American Psychiatric Association's definitive list of accepted disorders.

Dr. Goldberg made up a disease called "Internet Addiction Disorder" (IAD). In the message, he described the symptoms of the disease. One symptom was that "important social and occupational activities are given up or reduced because of internet use." Other symptoms included dreaming about the internet and having uncontrolled movements of the fingers, as if typing.

To Goldberg's surprise, several colleagues admitted to suffering from IAD and asked him for help. In response, Goldberg set up the Internet Addiction Support Group online for his colleagues. Soon, hundreds of self-described addicts began to post messages on the site, and some people admitted surfing up to twelve hours per day. Several universities and hospitals in the United States began to set up counseling services for those with IAD.

Despite his uneasiness over the part he played in this "discovery, Goldberg posted a message to members of the internet addicts forum every six months or so until his death in 2013. He tried to get them to examine why they are online so much—and to consider psychotherapy.