Is Google Making Me Stupid?

In the past year or so, I have had several instances of what I like to call a "reading funk." I have a hard time getting into a book, so I quit reading it. Now, I know there is no shame disliking a book and putting it down if it isn't doing anything for me. Life is too short to spend time reading a book I don't enjoy. But this seems to be happening more frequently and with books that were getting great reviews and sounded like they would be something I would enjoy. I started referring to this as a reading funk. I usually chalk it up to my mood at that particular time. Or maybe I was just tired of reading and needed a break. I even thought that maybe with all the reading I do, I am developing better taste and just don't have the patience anymore for all the junk out there. (Yea, I'm sure that's it.) But a new, and frankly frightening, possibility has come to my attention.

In this month's issue of Atlantic Magazine, Nicholas Carr has written an article called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which suggests another possibility. Maybe it's not a reading funk, but perhaps the way in which I read has changed. Carr writes that he has always been a voracious reader, spending hours reading lengthy articles or books. But lately he, too, has noticed his concentration starting to drift after a few pages. Reading lengthy works has become increasingly difficult for him. He has heard about similar troubles from other readers as well. He proposes that the Internet has changed the way we read. When we use the Internet, we are in a constant state of motion: reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blogs, watching videos and surfing from site to site. Most people skim sites and typically read no more than one or two pages of an article. The style of reading promoted by the Internet focuses on immediate, fast results. This scatters our attention and may be weakening our capacity for concentration and deep reading. This makes a lot of sense to me. I do spend my days skimming quite a lot of information online-news, blogs, book reviews, etc. I find myself unable or unwilling to read through lengthier articles. I even noticed that when I do want to read a lengthier article, such as this one, I just don't have the ability to concentrate long enough to read it online, so I print it out. Is it possible that I have just become so accustomed to fast, quick bites of information that my brain now has more difficulty concentrating for longer periods of time? Could this be why I am having more difficulty getting into books? That is seriously scary.