Title: How the internet is altering your mind | Internet | The Guardian
Headings: How the internet is altering your mind
Internet
How the internet is altering your mind
A new book claims the amount of time we spend on the internet is changing the very structure of our brains – damaging our ability to think and to learn
John Harris
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Content: One person talks and the other one listens, and maintains eye contact. That's very powerful. One pair of kids started dating after they'd done it." He also fears that texting and instant messaging may already be dampening human creativity, because "we're not thinking outside the box, by ourselves – we're constantly vetting all our new ideas with our friends." He warns that multitasking – surely the internet's essential modus operandi – is "not an efficient way to do things: we make far more errors, and there's a tendency to do things faster, but sloppier." Of late, he has been working with big US corporations – Boeing is the latest example – on how they might get to grips with the effects of online saturation on their younger employees, and reacquaint them with the offline world. When I ask him how I might stop the internet's more malign effects on my own brain, he sounds slightly more optimistic than Carr: we have the capacity to pull ourselves back from the mental brink – though only if we know what's at stake. " The brain can right itself if we're aware of these issues," he says. "