According to a new report published in PC Mag, google probably isn’t making you stupid. It was argued that we were becoming lazier as a society in the fact that we can find answers to anything just by “googling it”. They questioned if “the bite-sized snippets of information the Web provides make us less likely to read or search out more in-depth content – essentially making us stupid?”

The answer of the report was no, but google is indeed changing the way people think. The report surveyed 895 technology stakeholders via the internet. About 76 percent of respondents said that Google will not make us stupid.

“Google allows us to be more creative in approaching problems and more integrative in our thinking. We spend less time trying to recall and more time generating solutions”

- Paul Jones of ibiblio.org at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

This survey was sparked by an article published in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr. According to Carr;

The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.

I don’t know if google is making us stupid, but it sure is convenient. My spelling is probably worse than when I was 14 years old and I find myself googling things like “what is the cutest kitten in the world?”

What do you think? Leave a comment or tweet your thoughts @HelloLiefje