The Internets Are Helping Our Brains

I have never believed that things like television and the internet turn people's brains to mush. The notion of the idea is ignorant and simply propelled by skepticism of change. Now, I may finally have proof:

Yesterday, Mashable reported on a UCLA study that essentially shows that internet use can increase brain activity.

The study, which was originally reported by Fox News showed that groups of people with little internet usage, "were able to change their brain activity patterns and increase function after just 7 days of one hour sessions searching the web."

In the end, the study concluded that:

“The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults.”

Researchers are now hoping to make their findings more conclusive by testing younger subjects.

So what do we know, and is this social media related? Do we care?

Certainly we care, as should everyone, and specifically those in the profession of educating others. It is almost unbelievable that there are some out there who still believe all TV is bad for you, and the internet does not help in the learning process. Baffling really.

If nothing else, the internet is the best teaching tool to be introduced to society within the last 50 years. The absolute access to information and interactive nature of the web, not to mention the fact that prominent internet relevance and understanding resides in the abilities to read and write at a proficient level drive its ever increasing use, represent the significant evidence for my claim, if not the only evidence/reasoning needed.

The Fox News story explained that as the brain ages, "A number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles which can impact cognitive function."

"Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information."

This is where social media fits in. So the internet helps increase brain activity. Know what else helps people learn? Doing tasks and interacting with the processes they are being taught. What is social media? In a word, it's INTERACTION.

Some people write dumb Facebook status updates. Some people tweet stupid things. But ultimately they generate user interactions and topics/mediums for discussion. And what is discussion? Another learning tool. And if we want to go even deeper, discussion should be the end-all be all goal of any opinion-based journalist/opinion-based journalistic endeavor. Why? Because they are opinions! And opinions should be debated and discussed and analyzed and researched and ultimately understood and incorporated into our collective knowledge or revealed as ill-advised and without sufficient evidence and thus discarded.

Today, Mashable reported that 19% of internet users now post or read status updates. As concluded by the Pew Internet and American Life Project:

"the 11% number has skyrocketed to 19% in less than a year, which means that now almost 1/5 of the entire online population publish or read status updates on sites like Twitter"

THUS, INCREASINGLY, PEOPLE ARE GENERATING DEBATES, DISCUSSIONS AND FORUMS FOR CONVERSATION. ALL OF WHICH WHETHER SOMETIMES NEGATIVE AND HOPEFULLY MOSTLY POSITIVE, GENERATE LEARNING ONLINE.

For some, it probably seems like common sense. (And by some, I mean my generation). For others, they may still dispute or argue that pointless posts generate pointless learning or no learning at all. If nothing else, the evidence is beginning to accumulate.

People will just have to do what they always should have been doing. Find the information and generate their opinions/decisions themselves.

-Nate