The In­ter­net has re­duced our abil­ity to focus; changed how our memory works; pro­moted skim­ming text over deep, crit­ical read­ing; and changed how we in­ter­act with people. In the 2020 up­date to The Shal­lows: What the In­ter­net Is Doing to Our Brains, Nich­olas Carr sum­mar­ized:

_{"It takes pa­tience and con­cen­tra­tion to eval­u­ate new in­form­a­tion—to gauge its ac­cur­acy, to weigh its rel­ev­ance and worth, to put it into con­text—and the In­ter­net, by design, sub­verts pa­tience and con­cen­tra­tion. When the brain is over­loaded by stim­uli, as it usu­ally is when we’re peer­ing into a network-​connected com­puter screen, at­ten­tion splin­ters, think­ing be­comes su­per­fi­cial, and memory suf­fers. We be­come less re­flect­ive and more im­puls­ive. Far from en­han­cing human in­tel­li­gence, I argue, the In­ter­net de­grades it.” ²}

A 2019 study found that the In­ter­net "can pro­duce both acute and sus­tained al­ter­a­tions” in three areas:

_{''a) at­ten­tional ca­pa­cit­ies, as the con­stantly evolving stream of on­line in­form­a­tion en­cour­ages our di­vided at­ten­tion across mul­tiple media sources, at the ex­pense of sus­tained con­cen­tra­tion; b) memory pro­cesses, as this vast and ubi­quit­ous source of on­line in­form­a­tion be­gins to shift the way we re­trieve, store, and even value know­ledge; and c) so­cial cog­ni­tion, as the abil­ity for on­line so­cial set­tings to re­semble and evoke real‐world so­cial pro­cesses cre­ates a new in­ter­play between the In­ter­net and our so­cial lives, in­clud­ing our self‐con­cepts and self‐es­teem.” ³}

Moreover, stud­ies have found that people read­ing di­gital text skim more and re­tain less in­form­a­tion than those read­ing text prin­ted on paper. Also the ef­fects of di­gital read­ing span from less read­ing com­pre­hen­sion to less in-​depth tex­tual ana­lysis to less em­pathy for oth­ers. ⁴

Read­ing less crit­ic­ally res­ults in low Eng­lish grades and in read­ers be­liev­ing and shar­ing false in­form­a­tion, as well as mis­un­der­stand­ing po­ten­tially im­port­ant doc­u­ments such as con­tracts and voter ref­er­en­dums. ⁴

Bon­nie Kris­tian, Con­trib­ut­ing Ed­itor at The Week, also noted the In­ter­net’s de­struc­tion of in­ter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships, es­pe­cially dur­ing the COVID-​19 pan­demic: Many people have

_{''a lack of in­tim­ate friend­ships and hob­by­ist com­munit­ies. In the ab­sence of that emo­tional con­nec­tion and healthy re­cre­ational time use, this media en­gage­ment can be­come a bad sub­sti­tute. The memes be­come the hobby. The Face­book bick­er­ing sup­plants the re­la­tion­ships. And it’s all mov­ing so fast — tweet, video, meme, Tucker, tweet, video, meme, Mad­dow — the change goes un­noticed. The brain breaks.” ⁵}

Be­cause the In­ter­net touches nearly everything we do now, the ways our brains pro­cess in­form­a­tion is chan­ging to ac­com­mod­ate and adapt to the fast, surface-​level, dis­tract­ing nature of the In­ter­net, to the det­ri­ment of ourselves and so­ci­ety.

Many tech­no­lo­gies con­sidered com­mon­place today were thought to be ex­tremely dan­ger­ous upon their in­ven­tion. For ex­ample, trains caused worry among some that women’s bod­ies were not de­signed to go at 50 miles an hour,” and so their uter­uses would fly out of {their} bod­ies as they were ac­cel­er­ated to that speed.” Oth­ers feared that bod­ies, re­gard­less of gender, would simply melt at such a high speed. ¹⁹ In­form­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies have not es­caped the centuries-​old tech­no­pho­bia.Greek philo­sopher So­crates was afraid that writ­ing would trans­plant know­ledge and memory. ¹



The print­ing press cre­ated a con­fus­ing and harm­ful abund­ance of books” that, ac­cord­ing to philo­sopher Gottfried Wil­helm, might lead to a fall back into bar­bar­ism.” ^{2 21 22}



Sim­il­arly, the news­pa­per was going to so­cially isol­ate people as they read news alone in­stead of gath­er­ing at the church’s pul­pit to get in­form­a­tion. ²⁰

The tele­graph was too fast for the truth,” and its con­stant dif­fu­sion of state­ments in snip­pets” was be­moaned. ^{22 23}



The tele­phone was feared to cre­ate a race of left-​eared people—that is, of people who hear bet­ter with the left than with the right ear.” We would be­come noth­ing but trans­par­ent heaps of jelly to each other,” al­low­ing basic man­ners to de­grade. ^{22 23}



Schools were going to "ex­haust the chil­dren’s brains and nervous sys­tems with com­plex and mul­tiple stud­ies, and ruin their bod­ies by pro­trac­ted im­pris­on­ment,” ac­cord­ing to an 1883 med­ical journal. Ex­cess­ive aca­demic study by any­one was a sure path to men­tal ill­ness. ²⁰



The radio was loud and un­ne­ces­sary noise,” and chil­dren had de­veloped the habit of di­vid­ing at­ten­tion between the hum­drum pre­par­a­tion of their school as­sign­ments and the com­pel­ling ex­cite­ment of the loud­speaker.” ^{20 22}

Tele­vi­sion was going to be the down­fall of radio, con­ver­sa­tion, read­ing, and fam­ily life. ²⁰



Cal­cu­lat­ors were going to des­troy kids’ grasp of math con­cepts. ²

The VCR was going to be the end of the film in­dustry. Mo­tion Pic­ture As­so­ci­ation of Amer­ica’s (MPAA) Jack Valenti com­plained to Con­gress, "I say to you that the VCR is to the Amer­ican film pro­du­cer and the Amer­ican pub­lic as the {serial killer} Bo­ston Stran­gler is to the woman home alone.” ²⁴



Clin­ical and neuro­psy­cho­lo­gist Vaughn Bell, PhD, DClin­Psy, noted, "Wor­ries about in­form­a­tion over­load are as old as in­form­a­tion it­self, with each gen­er­a­tion re­ima­gin­ing the dan­ger­ous im­pacts of tech­no­logy on mind and brain. From a his­tor­ical per­spect­ive, what strikes home is not the evol­u­tion of these so­cial con­cerns, but their sim­il­ar­ity from one cen­tury to the next, to the point where they ar­rive anew with little hav­ing changed ex­cept the label.” ²⁰