Effects of the Internet today

I wonder how life would be without the Internet. Some of us remember a time before everything was connected, but what about living without smartphones, the use of search engines for navigation? It seems totally alien to us now, however, our increasing reliance on the online world affects our relationships and the ways in which we interact with one another. Our brains are even affected as more and more devices are connected to the internet. This is no surprise since online access around the world continues to grow. In 2016, 3.5 billion people accessed online services.

Among the top three countries that accessed online services are China with 721 million users, followed by India and the United States with 290 million users, with English being the most common language used online. There is no doubt that the way people use the Internet has changed across generations, mainly based on those who grew up with it readily available or those who need to adapt to it. Between the mid-1960s and early 1980s, Generation X online users logged an average of 100 minutes per day using mobile internet services. Millennials born from the early 80s onward logged an average of 185 minutes per day using mobile internet services.

We live in a world where social media and messaging apps are profoundly influencing how we live and communicate, with more than a billion people regularly using apps like WhatsApp and many more using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Due to the increasing use of Internet services, our behaviour is also changing. Phone calls and text messages are falling in popularity as more and more people use these platforms for communication, and online shopping has caused traditional high-street stores to decline rapidly.

The way our towns and cities look today is very different from a few decades ago, and much of this can be attributed to the availability of information online now. But how is this impacting our brains? We are losing our jobs to the Internet due to its prevalence.

The constant distractions that connectivity brings have been discovered to contribute to millennials' forgetfulness. It is a basic principle of memory that the more information you repeat and think about in your short-term memory, the better it is stored in your long-term memory. However, constant new information prevents this process from being effective and far less information is permanently stored as a result.

Due to the ease of accessing information online, you are less likely to remember it as you would if it were on a map, as opposed to an online resource. Our smartphones are becoming more addictive, too, as we become more reliant on being able to access the GPS app, no matter what we're doing. We are becoming increasingly accustomed to being distracted by updates, so our brains are less accustomed to transitioning into deeper modes of thinking, which makes achieving deep thinking more difficult.

Various studies show that our ability to control our minds has also reduced as a result of the constant flow of information. This means not only our ability to control our minds but also our ability to choose what we think about has decreased.

As we rely more on our smartphones and apps for information, we are less capable of determining what's important to focus on. We are more concerned with new information than what's actually important, while technology has clearly affected how our brains function, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Throughout history, inventions have enabled us to focus on less and less of one thing, thereby freeing up our time.

With the advent of washing machines, for example, people are spending less time cleaning clothes, so these hours are given over to other activities or work. We have more mental capacity to do other things because the internet allows us to communicate and find information much faster, but reducing our screen time helps to keep our brains active and malleable.

My advice is to keep track of how much time you spend on distractions each day and unplug every once in a while to make sure you're not wasting time