How The Internet Slows Your Thinking

I had a little difficulty doing some mental work and honestly, I couldn't believe it because it sounded so simple but yet I just couldn't think through it!

And then I turned to my best buddy - Google to help me out ('cos he's so intelligent. Gosh, this guy seems to know everything!) And in a second appeared before my eyes a list of information for me to choose from.

 The internet could be a lifesaver but...

Then it got me thinking about how much I rely on the internet for almost every little complicated mental work - and what if there was no internet at the time I need it the most? I wonder.

But this experience made me realise that I find it more and more difficult to use my brain to come up with simple solutions.

That's when I found out that the use of the internet is contributing to this.

So here are 4 ways the internet reduces your ability to brainstorm.

1. The internet diverts your attention thus making you lose concentration

Online music, videos and even memes on Facebook and Twitter all take our attention off the things we focus on daily. Brainstorming requires you to be focused in order to better analyse the factors at stake. Most of the time we brainstorm while online and therefore get distracted by the videos, music and photos. There are also chats and networking that occupy us while doing research on whatever we are brainstorming about.

2. Websites and applications think in our place

The aim of the internet when it was created was no doubt to make our access to information better. Google, Yahoo and Bing are good examples.

The existence of blogs also represents a huge amount of information where you can be informed on so many aspects of life as they tell personal experiences. This magnitude of information placed before us reduces the number of times we really get to think in order to obtain a solution to a problem.

It's easier to go online and Google what we are looking for. And even at that point, we don't need to type it out completely as Google provides us with better suggestions in relation to the words we are typing. Smart! Isn't it? But unfortunately, it prevents you from using your brain often.

Blogs as well contain a lot of 'How-To' posts that show us how to do almost everything be it in a video or written form. And honestly, as long as I have the internet I feel I can do anything because all I have to do is type and search for what I want.


But when the internet is off it's really hard to think and come up with most of the solutions on my own.

3. The Internet reduces our ability to retain information

The internet serves as an external hard drive to us. So the brain should be asking - 'Why even bother to retain all that information?'. Even while we read the information we find, most of the times we are not willing to retain it because we know that it will always be there as long as we bookmark it! I am guilty of this one I must say. I do a lot of bookmarks.

Not being able to retain information like facts and dates makes brainstorming very difficult because we don't have the information necessary to brainstorm.

4. It directs the way we think and reduces creative thinking

All the adverts and information found on the internet are well-targeted and therefore it affects the mind of the targets. The information found on the internet is a collection of other people's thoughts and findings.

The user may become unwilling to think out of the box of this information he has found. They may rather limit themselves to the same line of thinking as the creator of the information found.

It prevents real thinking and brainstorming which can bring about new ideas. This kills the power of creativity of the individual because he/she is influenced by the information received from the internet. Meanwhile, some of this information is correct while others are not.

The internet is a great tool and I recommend its use anytime but we need to make the products of our brain much more efficient by training our brain to come up with its own ideas. This will enable our ideas to stand out because of their uniqueness.