Information is easily found today. The internet is an instant answer machine. Whenever you have a question, you can instantly open Google and ask the question. The internet has made our daily lives easier. We even have voice assistants answering our every question.
But what if you don’t have access to your phone? Have you ever watched any apocalyptic movie where the characters have to rely on their cognitive ability to solve something?
What would happen if you don’t have your phone or internet available to rely on? Our brain contains a vastly more limited set of answers and knowledge than on the internet. What is 12*12? For some of us the answer to this question comes instantly however for others, we need to sit with our calculators to find this one.
A lot of us, don’t mentally calculate anymore due to access of calculators easily available on our phones. This is called getting mentally lazy. Since we have access to easy calculations the threshold to give up mentally calculating keeps getting lowered and lowered. Even if its an easy calculation, some of us may not even bother trying to solve this by using our brain.
Just 20 years back our parents remembered all the contact numbers however do we do that anymore? We don’t, because our phones do it for us.
For all the benefits, the internet can encourage the formation of habits that make us mentally lazy. And this isn’t just an anecdotal observation, this is backed up by a study in Harvard in 2011. The study found that when people are faced with difficult questions, they’re now primed to think about computers. And when they expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall for the information itself and higher recall for where they can access it.
Essentially we start to perceive the internet as being part of us and feel like we will also have access to it so there is no point in putting the cognitive efforts to learn, store information, and recall. This is called Cognitive offloading.
How does cognitive offloading affect learning and memory? Cognitive offloading reduces cognitive demand on memory because it reduces demands on internal storage. Rather than encoding individual items, people only need to remember the location of the saved items (Risko and Gilbert, 2016, Wegner, 1987).
Researches further show that the more we use the internet for quick answers the more we turn to it in the future. Cognitive offloading begets more cognitive offloading.
And this is also seen in the habits we form around other effort-saving technologies such as Cars, television, washing machines, etc. Smart technologies help save time and resources. Like moving away from oral memorization to the printing press. However, this transition of moving away from relying on our memory to the internet is different.
Our critical thinking is affected. Take the case of an English teacher who asked his students- How do modern novels represent the characteristics of humanity? This question was asked to challenge the critical thinking skills of students. And instead of thinking about it, it was found that they immediately turned to Google for the answers. The effort-saving technology was so close at hand that it had become the default problem-solving method.
We see many students relying on the Internet for their homework, especially college students as there aren’t designed books for their studies as in school. I’ve seen a specific video on Instagram, where a small girl is asking Alexa, answers to the questions for her school homework.
The more we rely on the internet, the lesser we start to think and use our cognitive abilities. Unless we consciously work against it, Our brains naturally want to take an easier path. Our brains love being lazy. That’s why working hard and self-discipline is so hard.
That’s why starting a business, changing your job, starting a study/ workout routine and sticking to it is hard.
The internet provides us with an abundance of information that without internet we probably wouldn’t know. People are able to share their experiences, knowledge and best practices. The important question here is how do we strike a balance in cognitive offloading?
Useful ways to apply Cognitive Offloading
There are some real benefits of cognitive offloading, Offloading can help overcome cognitive process capacity limits such as working memory or visual perception. It helps us make better decisions as well as there is not burden on the unconscious and conscious processing.
For example- Let’s say you are deciding what to major in - There may be lot of factors to consider such as Your passion, the fees, the years for the study, the resources, study abroad or the college near you. Does it have future benefits, Will it help you sustain a living? At such times relying on the internet for instant answers to these questions is a good time.
How do you strike a balance? How do you allow yourself to use this amazing tool while also retaining your critical thinking skills? There is a simple solution to this problem.
When you are confronted with a question you don’t have an answer to or if you are stuck on a problem, ask yourself- Do I have confidence in myself that I can solve this on my own? Challenge yourself to work on that problem, give it 15 minutes. You can use the 15-minute rule. When you find yourself stuck and feel like reaching out for help, the first thing to do here is to spend 15 more minutes trying to resolve it.
While you are trying to resolve it, you can document all the things you have tried. This documentation is helpful as it allows you to think about the problem from a different perspective, Which can often help solve the problem on its own.
If you are still stuck after 15 minutes, you can ask for help. This rule helps strike a balance. This allows to think independently and try to resolve the problem without direct easy answers.
Creating successful micro Habits
In the book “Atomic Habits” The author James Clear talks about how our Habits are how we embody our identities. For example, if you make your bed every day, you are embodying the identity of a person who is clean and organized. Our identities further encourages how we behave on a daily basis. Every action you take is a vote of what type of person you wish to become. Single instances don’t change your life, you keep voting and the vote build up creating what type of person you are.
What identity do you want our children to build? Do you want her or him to be a mentally lazy and incompetent human who outsources everything to machines? Or do you want to be an independent problem solver for whom the internet is a useful tool that makes you more powerful ?
THE CHOICE IS YOURS
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