Study: Google Makes You Smart
By Betsy Schiffman EmailOctober 15, 2008 | 1:50:32 PMCategories: GoogleAll that talk about how Google is making us stupid is a bit of a crock, according to a new study from UCLA researchers.
The study -- which appears in next month's American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, looked at brain circuitry changes among 55- to 76-year-old volunteers.
Among the experienced web searchers, the study found increased activity in the decision-making and complex reasoning portions of the brain when people used the web to search for stuff, while the search novices did not experience the same level of activity.
"Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading, but only in those people with prior Internet experience," the study author Gary Small told USA Today.
He also expects that inexperienced internet searchers would enjoy similar benefits over time.
I have much to say about the back-and-forth about whether Google (and, what everyone is really talking about, the Internet) makes us smarter or stupid. But it all comes down to this: If you define smart one way, Google is good for you. If you define smart a different way, Google is bad. Generally, bad means "not like me." Generally, good means "more like me."
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