Abby Hart

Abby Hart

ENGL-1010

Effects of Digital Media

            In recent years there has been a debate over how the internet and other digital media is being used and how it is affecting individuals and society. Common terms and phrases like media revolution, digital tools, mobile connectivity, media multitasking, “always on”, and “the culture of distraction” have been used by Nicholas Carr, Maria Bustillos, and Sherry Turkle to describe the recent phenomenon. All of them take a position, either positive or negative, regarding the effects on our consumption of the internet and digital media.

In “Does the Internet Make You Dumber?” article, Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is making you less smart and making you lose some of your cognitive skills. One of the things Carr said that the people, who receive messages like e-mail, voice, and text, are the kind of people who understand less than others. The other kind of people who multitask are less productive and less creative. The division of attention is the common thread of these abilities says Carr. He notes a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, Eric Kandel, who says that that only when we pay close attention to something the information will associate its self with something in our own memory. In one study they had people who were screen multitaskers and people who did a lot less of multitasking. In the study they found that the screen multitaskers could not really multitask in the real world because everything distracts them. In the end Carr is in favor of every one gaining more self-control and having them use it so the internet is used less and less.

            Nicholas Carr mainly uses logos in his article.  Logos is using accurate facts and then providing logical and meaningful reasons to support a position. Carr does not rely on his own credibility, instead  he references a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, Eric Kandel. The Nobel Prize is an international award given for outstanding achievement. Kandel received this award in 2000 for his research in memory storage in neurons. Carr also sites research studies conducted at reputable universities like Cornell and Stanford and other related professionals in the field to get the reader to believe or agree with his argument.

Although logos is the main appeal, the author uses pathos by providing facts that create emotion. Pathos is the use of emotion to persuade in an argument. The two best ways to use the readers emotions is be using specific, vividly described examples and making your word choices with the awareness of the emotional connotations of words. The introduction starts with subtle emotion when he says that we are becoming “scattered and superficial thinkers.” He is trying to make you to feel that you have a lack of thoroughness or care and that you are distracted or disorganized, which are all negative. When Carr sited neuroscientist Michael Merzenich explaining that our brains are being “massively remodeled” he is trying to strike fear.

Maria Bustillos takes a different view than Carr in her article “The Internet Is Making You Smarter!” Bustillos argues against Carr’s idea that the internet is “brain-damaging.” The reason that Carr came up with that idea is because he cannot concentrate like he used to, then he suddenly blames the internet. She criticizes Carr for not considering any other issues that could have been causing this lack of concentration. Bustillos mainly focuses on the reading aspect of Carr’s argument, comparing hyperlinks to footnotes and the differences between readers’ skill levels. She says, “It’s well worth the extra effort of concentration; if you want the goods, you’ll put up with the cost.” In the end Bustillos says that our brains are adaptable and we will adapt to gaining all this knowledge from the internet. She also says that the internet is making us “supremely better-informed and far more capable of serious study.”  Bustillos says if there is a thing making us dumber, it is the paranoid attitude.

Although Bustillos has some good arguments, where are her facts?  She sites only one person, Laura Miller. Who is Laura Miller? Bustillos never says why Miller is credible. Her good idea is to look for another cause. Another problem is that she says that advanced readers don’t have a problem reading complicated text. Bustillos never says how many readers are advanced who consume the internet?

To persuade her readers, Bustillos relies on logos. Although she lacks credibility and fails to refer to other credible people she uses logical explanations for why the internet isn’t as bad as Carr said. She looks for other causes, and provides solutions like, “Practice at reading these complex texts…” Her simplified solutions, to what might be a real difficulty for people, may not help those who have a hard time and are not “advanced readers”. Bustillos doesn’t use a lot of pathos but she still uses it. For example she uses scare tactics by using the words “panic” and “paranoid” and tells readers if we think like Carr, we’ll have sapped “cognitive power” and severely degraded memory retention. 

Not too long ago Sherry Turkle gave a talk on TED entitle “Alone Together”. She starts with a story about how we worried about how we would be able to keep computers busy. Now they keep us busy and we are their “killer app.” Turkle goes on to say we text at dinner, while we drive (even though it can be deadly), and even at funerals. She also mentions that kids notice parents on their phones when being picked up from school and they are so busy with their phones that don’t even make eye contact with their child. She calls all of this “The Culture of Distraction.” Turkle says this mobile connectivity is “always on” and “always on us”. Turkle says we are substituting life on a screen for the other kind. We bail out of the physical and the real and we want to. We are letting technology be the designer of our relationships. She also says we are lonely and fearful of intimacy, choosing the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Turkle says we share what’s easy and what looks good online but not what’s real. The end result is that we are losing the ability to be alone and the ability to converse and connect and have necessary conversations.

Sherry Turkle uses all three types of rhetoric. Ethos is established when she says she was at MIT, a world-renowned university. She was involved in research there and has interviewed kids who have grown up with parents that are “plugged in.” Upon little effort one can find she has a duel doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard (another well know university). She is also a professor at MIT and founder of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Pathos is used when she talks about things we are all probably guilty of or have experienced. She makes us feel sad for these children who have to deal with the competition of technology for their parents’ attention. Turkle talks about the anxiety people feel when they don’t have their phones. We become “impossible without our phones.” Finally, logos is used when Turkle tries to help us understand that if it is this bad now, then it will only get worse. We won’t be able to have “necessary conversations” and we’ll become more addicted.

When comparing Carr, Bustillos and Turkle we primarily see different opinions. Carr feels the internet and digital multitasking are diminishing your mental skills. Bustillos doesn’t agree with Carr and thinks we should practice our “new muscle”. Turkle sees a bigger picture. She looks at what’s happening with relationships and how multimedia is affecting it. All of them have valid points. Maybe we need to become more aware of how we use the internet and digital media and make better decisions based on what they’ve taught us.

Works Cited

 Bustillos, Maria. “The Internet Is Making You Smarter!”theawl.com. The Awl. 8 June 2010. Web. 5 May 2011

Carr, Nicholas. “Does the Internet Make You Dumber.” Onlinewsj.com. The Wall Street Journal,   5 June 2010. Web. 5 May 2011

Nobel Prize. Nobelprize.org/nobel-prizes/. Nobel Media AB 2012. 2 May 2011.

Turkle, Sherry. “Alone Together.” YouTube.com. YouTube, 25 March 2011. Web. 5 May 2011.