Apparently the smear campaign against the internet — you know, the meme that we were all being turned into morons by video games, social networking sites, and Google — has no factual basis:
Has Google been making us stupid? Are young people nothing but mindless husks, helplessly addicted to Facebook? Is the very internet itself some sort of insidious virus, creeping through the fibre optics, rewiring our brains, deadening neurons, stunting IQs, stymieing human interaction?
You could be forgiven for worrying. You don’t have to go far to read a scare story about what the upsurge in digital life over the past 20 years has apparently done to our brains. Yet help is at hand.
A report released this morning (The impact of digital technologies on human well-being) claims that the internet has actually been the victim of some sort of vicious smear campaign. An analysis of current research by the Nominet Trust, a UK charity dedicated to increasing access to the internet, claims that we’ve really been worrying about nothing all along. Relax, get online and stop worrying, is about the gist of it.
