Is Google making us stupid? I am toying with the sarcastic title of James Bowman’s essay, “Is Stupid Making Us Google?” The celebrated essay begins with the following: “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore.” Then the essay continues: “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. ... The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”

Indeed, who would bother to read a lengthy article or a voluminous book when we can Google it and get plenty of information instantly? Despite its convenience, however, excessive dependence on Google may go some way toward making us stupid.

One of the problems with relying on Google too much is that it deprives young people of the patience and ability to read a lengthy article and thus their intelligence hopelessly “flattens into artificial intelligence” as Nicholas Carr argues. In “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future,” Mark Bauerlein, too, argues that Google is now producing the dumbest generation ever whose only kind of reading is nothing but “information retrieval online.”

As a result, many students end up having often incorrect, fragmentary, SparkNotes-type information instead of profound knowledge acquired by a close reading of the text and contemplation of it. Indeed, Google seriously damages young people’s critical thinking skills. Consequently, “Slowly yet surely, our culture is degrading away from complexity to simplicity,” as Maryanne Wolf laments.

Social media sites are now widely used by people all over the world. Facebook, for example, is currently used by approximately 500 million people and Twitter by 250 million. People check their Facebook and Twitter accounts every 15 minutes or less. Without a Facebook or Twitter account these days, you become a social pariah instantly, losing your vital contacts and correspondences. People are also mesmerized by Facebook and Twitter for their seemingly unlimited amount of entertainment.

The problem is that approximately 60 percent of Facebook and Twitter users talk to people more often online that in real life, gravely damaging their social skills in the real world. They just exchange messages online all day, instead of meeting and talking to people in reality. Many students are so preoccupied with social media and engrossed in Facebook and Twitter that their interest in academia wanes, resulting in lower grades.

These social media sites even make their users develop psychological disorders which Larry D. Rosen calls, “iDisorder.” We already have iRobot, iPod, iPad and iPhone. Now we even have iDisorder!

Internet video games, too, are problematic. There is research on the relationship between violent video games and violent behavior in players. As online gamers know it is just a game, they become more violent because they feel they are not responsible for their actions. Sometimes, however, there are gamers who confuse online games with reality and thus become violent in real life. As players can connect with anyone through games, online games have also become a form of social media these days. The anonymous aspect of online games, however, creates an even more violent atmosphere.

Of course, we cannot ignore the bright side of social media sites. Facebook, for example, enables you to communicate with people and to keep in touch with your family and friends who are thousands of miles away. Despite geographical distances, they are just a few clicks away as long as you are logged in on Facebook.

Undoubtedly, communication is the key goal of Facebook. Social media sites also encourage shy, introvert people to socialize with others without having face to face conversations. Even those who have questionable social skills, therefore, can become a sociable person in cyberspace.

Nevertheless, social media sites have negative aspects as well. Facebook, Formspring or Twitter can be misused for cyber bullying, stalking, and even rape. Hiding behind anonymity, some Facebook and Formspring users do not hesitate to insult others, sometimes driving the victim to commit suicide. Others use social media sites for criminal purposes, luring innocent people into a deadly trap. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can have access to extremely sensitive personal information on the internet. Worst of all, SNS can be misused to control people for political gain, as Stephen King warns in his novel, “Cell.” It is well known that people who use social media can be easily manipulated and thus reduced to puppets by the invisible mastermind who pulls the string behind the stage.

Young people have long derided older people, calling them morons who do not know how to surf the Internet. But who is the moron between the young who have fragmentary information/artificial intelligence and the old who still have profound knowledge and critical thinking skills? Well, we will wait and see.

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.