The Internet: A Grave Threat to Critical Thinking?
As the wired become wireless, smartphones become exponentially smarter, and governments around the world avow to the provision of nationwide high speed access (for example, the ‘Universal Service Commitment’ outlined in the ‘Digital Britain’ Report), the advent of the ‘Information Superhighway’ is abaft, and the Internet has settled itself solidly into our daily lives. But as studies in Neuroplasticity, a hot topic in the field of Neuroscience itself, emerge into how use of the web has already begun to re-wire our brains in fundamental ways, it is important to ask how great a threat the Internet may be not only to what we think, but also to how we think.
Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Oxford, and former director of the Royal Institution Baroness Susan Greenfield, in 2008 asked in an address to the United Kingdom House of Lords:
“Whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for ADHD.”
While being cautious not to generalise, there are many studies that purport the falling and failing attention span of a vast number of, particularly young, Internet users. (The commonly used abbreviation that emerged from the creativity of Netizens themselves ‘tl:dr’ - ‘too long: didn’t read’ - springs to mind as an exemplification of these claims.) We want it now, and we want it fast. Skim reading online articles, snappy YouTube videos, and one hundred and forty character-long Tweets feed us with a constant trickle of snippets of new information, and, as studies by the likes of Nora Volkow show, feed out brain with bursts of feel-good chemicals. As quoted in one New York Times article (Ritchel, 2010), leading neuroscientist and director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse Nora Volkow claims that “[…] technology is rewiring our brains,” but in what ways?
The mesolimbic pathway is an area of the brain also known as the ‘reward pathway’ because when at work, it fires the chemical dopamine (a neurotransmitter – a sort of messenger) straight to the receptors of brain cells. Different neural pathways fire different neurotransmitters, and this messenger just so happens to deliver a sense of reward and satisfaction. In an interview in 2004, Volkow describes the kind of role this messenger plays: “It’s as if dopamine signalling tells the brain, ‘This is important, it’s salient. Pay attention!’” Dopamine causes us to desire, to search, to seek for things. And as so many of us are so connected to the Internet so much of the time, if we want information about something, we can Google it and receive that information almost instantly. If we want to know what our friends are doing, or on a wider scale what’s happening in the world, we can check their Twitter updates or Facebook posts and immediately get the low-down on whatever it is they’re up or, or whatever is going on at the moment. If we feel like talking to someone, whether it’s someone in particular or just a general desire for social interaction, a short instant message is sent, and a reply received within minutes. Our constant seeking is rewarded with short shots of information, and the Dopamine keeps whispering for more, more, more. It would be difficult to believe that this constant bombardment of reward pathways, not just by Facebook or Twitter or any social networking site in particular but by as Greenfield put it “the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies”, did not have an effect on our brains, at the very least biologically.
However, how might it affect our thinking in a less physical sense? The Internet is a seemingly endless fountain of raw information. The plethoric stream of data one may find on any particular topic of interest - on every topic of interest - leads to the aforementioned ‘skimming’ of web pages and articles for bullets of information that appeal to the user in attempts to satiate his/her desire for their ‘next hit’. This totalitarian hunger can cause a sense of near-sightedness within the perception of the individual, who suddenly does not have time for anything other than their presubscribed RSS feeds and Twitter lists. Furthermore, the democratisation of this wealth of information on the Internet means that anyone can create a post about anything or anyone else, and it may be deemed valid without further investigation of the source, or the information itself; without proper critical thinking.
The Internet, and its speed and extensive reach, can most definitely be seen as both a blessing and a curse. In late 2010, a number of teenage boys ranging from nineteen to some as young as thirteen, committed suicide in separate instances of homophobic bullying, the majority of which, in most cases, involved the Internet. One case in particular, Tyler Clementi, involved Clementi’s roommate and apparent friends secretly recording, streaming and sharing on the Internet Clementi’s more intimate time spent with another male, believed to be his boyfriend of the time. The viciousness of the Internet, and the rapid spread of information, in this case potentially malicious information, can be both ruthless and unstoppable. In the case of Clementi, and countless others who fall victim to the grip of cyber bullying, it can be fatal, too.
Perhaps the idea that something hurtful or psychologically damaging is ‘on the screen’ and experienced in what may be perceived as being online and not ‘IRL’ (another abbreviation coined by Netizens, this one meaning “in real life” – at least in some ways claiming that the Internet has little influence over unplugged or offline life, should such a life exist anymore) may stymie our more empathic nature. But the Internet can also be a highly enriching and helpful place. Merely a day after the Christmas Day Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, the ‘Phuket Disaster Message Board’ was set up by volunteering Internet adepts, in an effort to provide fast and much needed information on persons missing and found. It became an invaluable hub of two way communication for those relatives put in turmoil at the time of the disaster.
The sometimes volatile constructive and destructive natures of the Internet and in information posted on it, can lead to the question of censorship. Plato himself argued that some people are naturally more intelligent and more virtuously moral than others, and was an advocate of the idea that the public as a whole required these people to guide them and train them, spoon feeding their otherwise inferior and incapable minds. Should more negative, or less typically appeal data been screened from the Internet? Should the less helpful, more dishonest ‘facts’ be filtered out? If the answer is yes, then who should be the ones to censor? And will ‘watch the watchmen’, so to speak, ensuring that what these censors do allow our fingers to reach within the annals of the web is honest and decent and reputable? Of course, the above examples maybe extremes, but in between the black and white information of the Internet, are multitudinous seas of gray information, that our own gray matter may idly believe to be one or the other while under the influence of reward-chemical saturation.
Sumner (1940) defines critical thinking as “the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not.” Therefore, in order to think critically, when we are presented with a piece of information, (the proposition) whether in the form of a paragraph in a textbook, or a bulletin on a news website, or a Tweet, the first thing we must do is not to take it as a given, as a fact – we must not automatically accept this proposition. Rather, a myriad of questions should fire in our brains, questioning the fallibility of the source and of the information itself and comparing it to reality, to locate the correspondences, or lack thereof.
Scriven and Paul (1987) posit that critical thinking should
“be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills (“as an exercise”) without acceptance of their results.”
In order to better identify what critical thinking entails then, it is perhaps easier to identify what it most definitely is not. Rather than the quantity of information recovered and recorded by an individual, critical thinking is more directly concerned with the quality of the information. What does the information itself say? What is the tone? Is the source a reputable one? Have they in turn their own source(s)? If so, are these other sources properly cited/ referenced? The most pressing question in this case is that of from where or from whom the data originated, and the ease of verification of both the information, but also the source itself. Neither then, is critical thinking solely the ability to do so – in order to be a critical thinker, one must put the theory into regular practice, and think critically. But as the third point states, critical thinking is a means to an end, and dismissal of the results of the previous two statements pointed out in the extract, does not a critical thinker make. Put simply, “Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking.” Paul and Elder (2008)
To better understand human reaction to, and interaction with information provided by the Internet, Professors Graham and Metaxas conducted a survey with one hundred and eighty participants in Wellesley College, Massachusetts in 2001. The survey consisted of seven emails, the first outlining the survey and containing a questionnaire to gather personal information that could be attached to the resulting data from the survey, in order to ascertain whether a particular group or category of student was more susceptible to misinformation and weaker in their critical thinking. The subsequent six containing a question each, pertaining to attempts to identify the strategies students employ when it comes to searching online. According to a report written by Leah and Metaxas wrote after the results were collected, the three main questions the survey sought to answer were:
· How strongly do students rely on the Internet for information?
· What claims are students more likely to believe?
· Who is most susceptible to misleading claims?
In order to ascertain the level of dependence on the Internet as a research tool, the students were instructed to use whatever means of resource they desired, as long as they recounted what methods they used when answering the survey. Each of the six questions attempted to evaluate each student’s abilities to think and assess information critically. As each answer was scored, equal weighting was applied to both the accuracy of the information, and also the attempted efforts, if any, of a student to verify the validity of the information itself. An accurate response to a survey question, backed up by two separate sources, was deemed by the pair to be the prime answer to any particular question presented to the students.
Less than two percent of the students’ responses cited offline sources in their answers, highlighting and eagerness and dependency on the Internet, and in the majority of cases solely the Internet, as a research tool. The Kaiser Family Foundation report (2010) verifies the daily importance of the Internet in the lives of typically student-aged children, with those between the ages of eight and eighteen having spent an average of one hour twenty nine minutes per day on the Internet in 2009 (an increase of almost a half hour in the last five years). Although it is believed by experts that any one search engine only covers sixteen percent of the Internet {Introna and Nissenbaum (2000)}, students who took part in the study immediately turned to the use of their preferred search engine in all cases that a specific website was not mentioned. Few students, when asked, were able to impart any kind of knowledge they may have had on the working principle of search engines, even though the engines were relied upon heavily as a guide towards finding correct information.
In cases of misinformation by more traditionally authoritative web sources, for example large international companies or government websites, close to and sometimes over half the participants placed full confidence in what were believed to be facts, without feeling the need to search for corroborative evidence. In these cases, the so-called facts claimed by these supposedly trustworthy organisations were in fact false, or at least vague half-truths. Interestingly, when the survey questions moved away from these kinds of sources general deemed trustworthy, students became much more initially sceptical of taking what they recovered as part of the assessment as fact. When presented with two very easy to answer questions (students were asked to name the creator of the Linux computer operating system and to find out the total land area of Lisbon, Portugal), three quarters of participants, in both cases, listed the first answer they came to without any attempt at verification. This result is indicative that the time or effort required to validate information or a source found on the Internet matters little when it comes to evaluating web information critically. Concluding from the results of this study, it is clear that Internet users view the Internet itself as a primary source, with typically little or no evaluation deemed necessary – blindly accept information without critical thinking or analysis, under the influence of the attitude that if it’s on the Internet, it must be true.
We are told, and it is evidenced through scientific study, that at least to some extent our bodies are shaped by the foods we eat. Perhaps the same can be said of our brains – what we put into them is what we get out of them, much like the basic principles of input/output that the computers we are possibly chained to. Constantly jumping from one new half truth or exaggerated piece of information, to another, and to another, and so forth, in an apparently unending quest for more new information with little regard for the older pieces, seems like a veritable chewing-gum for the brain. We do not stop to analyse or consider the fallibility of the information we read on the Internet five minutes ago, because we are very well onto the next. Thus, our ability to think critically is halted and damaged, for lack of use. In order to be a critical thinker, one must think critically – evaluating and verifying what the Internet is so willing to feed us and our brains with, whether we are fed with well-meaning, or more malevolent intentions. What is perhaps the greatest virtue of the Internet, can also be considered its greatest weakness; it is unselective. Information most definitely does not equal knowledge, and so we must seek out that which leads from one to the other. We must question the information we come into contact with, rather than blindly accepting any proposition of ‘fact’ or ‘truth’, and find correspondence and corroboration between the data we retrieve, and reality – We must apply critical thinking. When speaking of critical thinkers, Linda Elder (2007) says of them “They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living, because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world.” Rather than being, as Plato advocated, receptacles for whatever some supposedly more intelligent or more moral person provide us with information that they deem best and most right for us to know, it is imperative that analyse and evaluate for ourselves. Qualitative loss is abound in the world of quantity of the Internet, and it is for the ease of which we allow ourselves to be placated into passivity with click after click, update after update, and search after search, that the Internet is either a most grave threat to the development of critical thinking, or a most powerful inspiration towards critical thinking itself.
