Positive effects of Internet on your Brain

Can we imagine a life without internet? With the Internet permeating every facet of our working and personal lives, our minds are struggling to keep up to the development. Many of us have grown accustomed to staying online 24/7 that we feel at loss when we unplug. We need to have constant access to our messengers, social networks and apps of all kinds to feel part of the connected world. It is no surprise that our growing dependence on this revolutionary technology is changing the way we think, especially so for Gen-Z population who grew up not realising that an alternate world existed before them.

- Pratik Ghone

We are often unaware of outside forces that are affecting us on the inside because they typically happen at a subconscious level. The same can be said of technologies that which have been assimilated into our lives, from the television to the world wide web. Here are some major ways which the internet have transformed our minds behind the scene.

1) Boosts Brain Function

Generally speaking, internet surfing is much more complex than reading books since the process involves finding what we want on search engines and jumping from one hyperlink to another. For this reason, when middle-aged and elderly participants were tasked to perform web searches on specific topics assigned by the researchers, the brain activity of those who had been using the internet were found to be more profound than those who rarely or never uses it.

A second brain scan was conducted two weeks later after the participants were asked to do internet searches for an hour each day for seven days. Amazingly, the inexperienced internet users now showed brain activity that was akin to those observed among participants who were already familiar with the internet. The study proves that internet searching alone has the capability of rewiring our brain. Regions of the brain responsible for short-term memory and decision-making were activated during the second brain scan, suggesting that internet use boosted these specific brain functions.

If such short period of internet training is all it takes to improve our cognitive abilities, just imagine how much more advanced our mind is after years of exposure, not just to search engines like Google, but also to social media and a wide variety of interactive content available online. The exponential growth of user-generated content online over the past decade is a definite proof that we are becoming more creative as individuals.

2) Increases Creativity