Sitting in a mall food court, two teenagers were having a discussion on music. One of them questioned when Kurt Cobain killed himself. The other did not know the answer. They both whipped out their cell phones.
When someone is asked a question or needs to know information, the most common answer or solution these days is, “Hold on, I will Google it.”
“You do not have to retain information because if you don’t know something you can look it up on your phone real fast,” said Steven Southrey, 33 of Philadelphia.
Google and other search engines are everywhere. From desktop computers, to portable laptops, to cell phones in pockets, anyone can access the internet at any time.
The internet contains information from almost everywhere in the world and allows average people access to information they would not normally be able to access; however, is that affecting a person’s need to have a fully functioning brain?
“You don’t have to learn things, you can Google search everything. Obviously you can’t perform heart surgery from watching a video on YouTube, but you can watch a doctor do it and take notes,” says Southrey.
Before the internet and search engines came into play, schools taught simple lessons on spelling, grammar, history, science, etc. Now, students might learn this information, but there is no need whatsoever to retain the information as it is available at the click of a mouse.
All of these advances in technology and the internet cause people to become lazy. Why read something when you can Google it?
Apparently, doctors find Google just as helpful instead of flipping through thousands of pages in a medical dictionary.
According to a survey performed by the IPSOS, the world’s third ranked research company, for Wolters Kluwer Health in 2011, 46 percent of doctors use Google, Yahoo, or another web browser as a frequent source to diagnose, treat  and care for patients. Another statistic is that 42 percent of doctors frequently use WebMD or MayoClinic to diagnose, treat and care for patients.
Scary, isn’t it?
An experiment performed by scientists led by Dr. Betsy Sparrow, assistant professor of psychology at Colombia University, let participants read statements and test them to find if internet use affects memory.
“Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read,” the scientists stated.
Of course, society does not use the internet solely for research. Many Americans use the internet as consumers.
During the 2011 holiday season, half of all consumers in a survey conducted by ClickIQ said they purchased at least some of their gifts online.
How does this technology effect the way society runs and how do Americans cope?
“The internet is not going away, nor is social media. As a society, we will really have no choice but to adapt over time in terms of what we put out there, how we view what is out there, how we interact with that is out there, and how we let what is out there affect us,” said 23 year old, Chase Kramer of Philadelphia.
Instead of making decisive conclusions on how the internet is effecting society and making people dumb and lazy, maybe waiting to see the future of the technological advances is best.
After all, every generation has its technological advances.
“A hundred years ago, someone who paid to have a telegram sent instead of the cheaper, more traditional option of riding across town to deliver it by hand might have seemed lazy and wasteful to those who did not have that technology growing up,” said Kramer.