Whether you think the internet is ushering in an intellectual apocalypse or simply making daily tasks easier and information more accessible, no one can deny its influence. Like the many innovations that came before it—including the map, the clock, the scroll, and even the book—the internet has proven immensely useful and quietly powerful. Writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Nicolas Carr reveals the truth behind our screens in his book, The Shallows. Drawing upon history, neuroscience, and cultural research, Carr proves the internet isn’t a static repository of information, but an active agent in the remaking of the human brain—whether its users like it or not.

When people consider the overall impact that a particular innovation or technology has within culture, two schools of thought arise. On the one hand, you have the “instrumentalists,” or those who think history’s many technological innovations are essentially harmless for their users. Then, you have those who endorse what sociologist Thorstein Veblen calls “technological determinism,” claiming that all inventions—from the phonetic alphabet in 750 BC to the internet in 1989—are inherently formative. Followers of this theory see much to fear in technologies of all sorts, no matter how appealing. The philosopher Marshall McLuhan falls into the latter camp, and his 1964 work Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a venomous portrayal of the ways that media corrodes the mind. His famous phrase, “the medium is the message,” encapsulates his thought and applies to Nicholas Carr’s take on the internet as well. At its core, it’s not the internet’s endless array of YouTube videos or digital libraries full of Wikipedia pages that corrupt its users. Instead, it’s the way those things are presented that proves so dangerous.

As internet browsers bounce from site to site, open up countless tabs, and glean information at an increasingly rapid pace, they unknowingly act according to what Carr calls the “intellectual ethic” of the internet. Whatever innovation it belongs to, from the internet to the papyrus scroll, an ethic essentially compels people to act or think in a particular way. Those who are both for and against the internet claim that at its core, this technology in particular teaches its users to think in ways that counter what Carr terms the “linear literary mind,” a mind capable of sustained thought and following the path a plot or argument takes. Not only does hopping from one’s email to a Google search page work against this kind of mindset, but the act of reading anything online tugs the mind away from being fully engaged with the text in a relatively seamless way. The internet gives its users plenty to think about, while simultaneously destroying their ability to ponder those questions clearly and meaningfully.

The lapse in linearity is especially evident in young people for whom the world of the internet is like a second home. According to research conducted by nGenera beginning as early as 2008, time kids spent on the internet inevitably trained their brains to survey texts in unconventional ways, moving them to pay more attention to seemingly important parts regardless of the logical flow of the writing itself. In short, these kids (and their parents) are struggling to dive into stories in the same way they used to, and the new tale the internet tells them might not end happily for their enraptured brains.

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After suffering through decades of poor health and a condition that led him to drop his job as a professor and nearly give up on writing, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter. This wasn’t just any typewriter, though. Like today’s internet, this Malling-Hansen Writing Ball promised its users unprecedented efficiency, giving Nietzsche the second wind he needed to compose the rest of his gloomy philosophy. When his friend Heinrich Köselitz read the philosopher’s new typewritten works shortly afterward, he found that the writing itself was snappier and more precise than Nietzshe’s prior work. Nietzsche agreed, claiming that “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Even beyond the realm of our thoughts, though, countless discoveries in neuroscience prove that tools of all kinds, whether typewriters or laptops, manipulate the human brain in ways that are often unavoidable.

The feature of human brains that is perhaps most relevant to the issue of the internet’s neurological impact is “neuroplasticity.” Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s potential to morph based on the experiences and stimuli to which it is exposed. This property of the brain fills pages of popular neuroscience books now, but at first, scientists didn’t believe it even existed. As a young, up-and-coming neuroscientist in the 1960s, Michael Merzenich found evidence of neuroplasticity while researching the brains of monkeys as they processed disruptions in their sensory nerves. Previously, the scientific community believed the brain was relatively consistent in its composition; they would never have dreamed it is the site of constant neurological revision. But, as experiment upon experiment would later prove, the brain is inherently malleable and unavoidably susceptible to the influence of what it is fed. London taxi drivers became the poster children for neuroplasticity when brain scans revealed how their detailed knowledge of every last highway and byway had reformed and enlarged particular portions of their gray matter.

The brain alters its structure when someone engages in a particular activity often, because it is more inclined to act in line with that change once again. According to the psychiatrist Norman Doidge, the brain reorients its design to accommodate new tasks, activities, and skills, continually reaffirming them as time goes on. That’s why the neurological impact of the internet is so pervasive—people use it for nearly everything, from work and research to attending classes and completing school assignments. Even more significantly, the way the internet doles out its content is irresistible to the brain, creating content-hungry neurological pathways that make neuroplasticity imminent. 

The psychiatrist Gary Small found this to be the case in 2008 when he compared the brains of people who used the internet often with the brains of those who did not. Small found that as both groups browsed Google, their brains lit up in vastly different ways. For instance, he witnessed that the region known as the “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex” (which manages attention and working memory), was especially active in those who had spent a lot of time online. On the other hand, those who hadn’t spent much time on the internet presented less stimulation in that region and in the brain overall. But, when Small prescribed a daily hour of internet time to those participants, it only took five days for their brains to light up near that spot, quickly adjusting to their time spent browsing.

All of this proves that the brain is not a silent, passive spectator—even a simple, mundane Google search alters its composition.

Following a long tradition of writing materials, including Sumerian clay tablets, Egyptian papyrus scrolls, Roman wax tablets, and finally the codex, in 1445, the legendary Johannes Gutenberg brought a new technology to the scene: the letterpress. Prior to Gutenberg’s development, the occupations of reading and writing were exclusionary. The materials were too expensive to allow for a widespread cultural pastime. But all that changed when Gutenberg put his machine to work. Finally, books could be produced on the cheap and at a speed people at the time found simply astonishing. It wasn’t long before the greatest literary masterpieces in all of history, those of Shakespeare and Cervantes, were composed and compiled into books facilitated by Gutenberg’s letterpress. With this came the proliferation of what Carr calls the “book’s ethic of deep, attentive reading,” and a kind of mindset the internet makes impossible to achieve.

Books lovers and agnostics alike are all familiar with the experience of simply falling into the words of a text—whether it be a novel, a memoir, or a piece of poetry. Nearly everyone can recall a moment wherein a particular passage spoke to them, or made them feel as if they entered an entirely different world. Led by Nicole Speer, the Dynamic Cognition Laboratory at Washington University has found that in moments like these, the brain processes the particular events taking place within a piece of writing similarly to how it processes actual events. What readers feel as they follow a compelling plot line or stumble upon a particularly beautiful passage is an enchanting experience for them and their brains. 

Unfortunately, the mental endurance needed to follow a plot line or line of argument, an endurance that Gutenburg’s invention enhanced, is beginning to lose its appeal in contemporary culture. Though the activity of reading itself persists even in our digital-media-entrenched modernity, reading things in print is on the decline. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that as early as 2008, the time most adults spent with a book in their hands started to dwindle. In just four years, readers spent 11 percent less time with their books, and as a result, encountered far fewer moments of literary wonder. Despite the satisfaction people derive from books, the internet presents an entirely different kind of experience for the brain to consume. 

According to the writer Steven Johnson, the internet creates a far more robust experience for the brain and gives it more things to process than a book typically does. In this way, the internet is inherently entrancing for the brain, and some may say it has an advantage over the book. In reality, though, there is no actual advantage. As the writer Cory Doctorow insightfully notes, the internet is an “ecosystem of interruption technologies,” rather than a place to cultivate true, personal, and worthwhile thought. The book, on the other hand, is a more neurologically soothing space, like a waterfront park or a quiet cafe, in which the mind can ponder freely. Replacing the book with the internet is not a one-for-one swap, then: Digital space is simply not conducive to the most profound thoughts.

For the brain, the internet is like a crowded playground. With so much going on—the sight of numberless ads, pages full of websites, and billions of answers to a single Google question—the brain is basically guaranteed to absorb none of what it sees. Several studies prove this to be the case and reveal why it is altogether impossible to remember the answer you just asked Google. Research proves that distractions are detrimental to the brain’s capacity to focus and absorb information. According to neuroscientists, receiving a social media notification or seeing an interesting advertisement creates “switching costs” for the brain, depleting it of the energy needed to think clearly about the information so that it can recall it later. With so many places to look, the brain can’t muster the energy it needs to look anywhere, and as a result, it forgets most of what it sees.

According to neuroscientist Eric Kandel and psychologist Bruce McCandliss, the most important component of creating a memory is the brain’s ability to practice what Carr calls “attentiveness.” Kandel’s work In Search of Memory provides evidence for the claim that on the neurological level, attention is a whole brain endeavor, involving various components working in kind to produce a firm memory. Not surprisingly, the internet hijacks this process. Even more significantly, it also disguises itself as a place where people can keep track of the things they won’t remember and makes them even more prone to forget. A revolutionary study conducted in 2011 discovered what came to be known as the “Google effect.” Researchers from Columbia and Harvard found that when people know they have the internet at their beck and call, they are less likely to remember information they receive. Knowing they have the internet to pick up the slack, their brains don’t work as hard to hone their attention and fuel the creation of memory. For this reason, you might not ever remember how many ounces of water there are in a cup—not if you keep asking Google, at least.

The implications of this extend far beyond trivial mental blunders. Remembering how many ounces of water there are in a cup may not be crucial to who you are as a person, but the process of memory itself is. Moreover, various writers and scholars note that when peoples’ memories are compromised, the culture that surrounds them is impacted as well. As the author notes, “Culture is sustained in our synapses,” and preserved in every person’s capacity for remembering. Protecting your memory from the internet is not a small matter, and it is definitely one you don’t want to forget. 

In the late 1960s, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created an algorithm-based technology he lovingly called “ELIZA.” Essentially, Weizenbaum built his machine to work as a faux therapist, running it on a program that helped it process verbal language and spit out seemingly sympathetic words in response. Contrary to what the scientist expected, ELIZA was a hit. But, it wasn’t the system’s impressive algorithms that snagged people’s attention. Rather, it was ELIZA “herself” who did the trick. The system made lovely company, after all, and people who spoke with it received its questions as if they were from a real human being rather than an algorithm. Like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, Weizenbaum was mortified by his creation. He didn’t think it would be so easy for people to mistake a piece of technology for a human being. More significantly, he foresaw terrible consequences in their cognitive Freudian slip. Whether people confuse coding for compassion, or simply rely on good old Google to resolve all their questions, leaning too heavily on the internet and other similar innovations leads to what McLuhan calls “autoamputation,” or a severing of true human nature.

Interestingly, the way people flocked to Weizenbaum’s charming ELIZA opened up a bizarre rabbit trail of research. Scientific discoveries shed new light on our quirks and tics. For instance, one study by the Harvard researcher Jason Mitchell identified particular areas in the brain that help people assess what he calls “the goings-on of other people’s minds.” These cerebral “mind reading” tools have helped people get along with each other throughout history. Even more importantly, Mitchell found that these same portions of the brain that help us “mind read” often trick people into believing that things like ELIZA are truly living, too. This is just what Weizenbaum was so wary of. Humans are “people-people”—even when the “people” they interact with aren’t people at all. Moreover, it isn’t just their tasks, questions, or free-time that people hand over to their tech, but they often sacrifice the things that make them unique individuals as well, as the common source of internet mediates their thoughts and molds their process of thought formation. 

Unfortunately, people lose a lot more than just their time, memory, and mental space as they use the internet. They may also relinquish their ability to understand other people. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio discovered, the neurological workings of sensations like “empathy and compassion” are slow to arrive and often require a great deal of inner cultivation to come to fruition. Considering the quick speed and cluttered design of the internet, spending more time in its web might not be the best way to grow oneself as a human being. The internet has much to offer its users—information, friends, entertainment—but it also has much to take away. Now, the coding is out of the bag, and it’s up to every person to determine whether the treasures of the internet are worth their highly personal price.