Is Google Making Us Stupid???

LaGuardia College
Aaron Straker
11/23/10

I think Google stops people from using their knowledge. In the blink of an eye, the search engine delivers useful information about pretty much any subject imaginable. Think about when you don’t understand something or your unsure where do you go. Most of the time you’ll go to Google to get the information. Without out even taking the time to think about what you’re not understanding. You could have probably gotten the answer if you just sat down and thought about the subject material. But google is so tempting because it has all the answers and it’s so easy to use. When you first go to the internet you most likely will be taken to google. You can access google through your computer, laptop, Cell Phone even IPod. Almost everyone has at least one of the devices. Nicholas Carr author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains” thinks that google is even making us shallow.


From personal experience I’d say whenever I don’t understand something I’ll run to google, which I’m sure many others do. I mostly go to google for my Math homework. If I can’t solve a solution I’ll search how to solve the certain math equation. While I could have taken the time to brainstorm, what is the question asking me? Nicholas Carr says “What really makes us intelligent isn’t our ability to find lots of information quickly”. Meaning you don’t have to run to google for information, because that doesn’t make you intelligent anyone can run to google for information. If you think deeply on your own without google search engine you’ll see yourself becoming a much better thinker and more intelligent.


Nicholas Carr says “If were distracted, we understand less, remember less, and learn less.” This is true if you’re using google. Once your on google you’re on the internet, there are so many distractions on the internet that you won’t even be able to use that information you just found. You can be doing homework but you take a trip to google, next thing you know your own facebook then later on YouTube. Now you’re so far away from what you were just doing. You might waste 1 or 2 hours surfing the web, when all you came for was for an answer to a question you didn’t know. Nicholas Carr says “The Net bombards us with messages and other bits of data, and every one of those interruptions breaks our train of thought. We end up scatterbrained. The fact is, you’ll never think deeply if you’re always Googling, texting, and surfing.” This is true especially when I’m doing homework, I’ll watch a YouTube video which is about 10 minutes long, and then I’ll answer one or two questions on my homework. Using google has many disadvantages you get your information, but you might easily get distracted away from the work your currently doing.


Nicholas Carr says “If you’re really interested in developing your mind, you should turn off your computer and your cell phone and start thinking. Really thinking. You can Google all the facts you want, but you’ll never Google your way to brilliance.” If everyone uses google for information they’re all going to get the same answer, not always the same but mostly similar. But if you sit down and think about something you might think of something different, and no one else might know about it.