‘The Shallows’: It Turns Out the Internet Is Making Us Stupid
A review of ‘The Shallows’, by Nicholas Carr; Atlantic Books, 2020.
Few books lately have made had such an immediate impact on me as Nicolas Carr’s The Shallows. Not Iain McGilchrist’s magisterial The Matter with Things, not Patrick Deneen’s bold and unsettling Regime Change, not even Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy — though all three certainly left an impression. No: it was the The Shallows that hit me like a back-slap across the face, because it convincingly argues that using the internet makes us considerably less creative, less articulate, more shallow and, in the end, much more stupid. Damn.
The argument is that the internet, while useful in ways that do not need restating here, is having an appalling effect on our ability to focus and contemplate. The reason has to do with neuroplasticity — the idea that the brain reorganises itself in response to new experiences. Carr leans heavily on this notion, arguing that our relentless internet use has re-wired and continues to re-wire our brains to a ridiculous degree. This, says Carr, means that we now prefer browsing over reading, scanning over studying, and thinking shallowly rather than contemplating deeply. The book stitches together various studies and expert views to create a tapestry on which the words ‘The internet is making us stupid’ stands out. We now have ‘jet ski’ minds: we skim on the surface at high speeds; we no longer dive into the depths of life.
We now prefer browsing over reading, scanning over studying, thinking shallowly rather than contemplating deeply.
It isn’t the first time that a new technology has changed our brains. Books did it. So did clocks. The clock, in fact, reoriented our understanding of time so radically that it thoroughly reshaped the culture. For the first time, we began to carve the day up into blocks and think about the value of our time, how much of our lives we wasted, and what might happen if we used it more deliberately. This gave rise in its turn to greater personal ambition and so greater individualism, which accelerated change. Carr sees the internet as having a cultural effect that is far more extreme than the clock’s, and on the evidence, he is right.
The clock, in fact, reoriented our understanding of time so radically that it thoroughly reshaped the culture.
The Shallows could easily have drowned in the depths of academic neuroscience and psychology, but Carr does admirably to keeps it afloat and readable. The challenge he faces, really, is balancing anecdotal evidence, of which this is oodles, with hard scientific research. While he lays out a range of studies to firm up his claims, his reliance on personal observations might not sit well with those who prefer their science served without a side of memoir.
All in all, this is a convincing, well-researched overview of the internet’s impact on our brains. Carr is very much sounding the alarm in respect how the internet is trashing our intellectual life, though there is a fatalism in the way he writes: a sense that the digital tide cannot be turned back. It is a must-read for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the pace of digital innovation and wants to feel even worse about it. But it might just give you the jolt you need to step out of the water, dry off, and spend a few more hours unplugged, undistracted, undisturbed, and feeling altogether more human.
