Why Web users are in trouble

Is it any wonder that heavy Internet users have a hard time sitting down with a book for extended stretches? Nicholas Carr says that the Web has changed our cognitive circuitries - and not in a good way. "We have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us," Carr writes in his new book, "The Shallows." Some snippets from his conversation with The Atlantic's Benjamin Carlson:

You write that the Internet encourages a mental ethic of speed and, in effect, distraction. Tell us a little about how you arrived at this idea.

It was originally spurred by my own personal experience. Like a lot of people, I had been using the Net heavily for more than a decade. In fact, every time the Web gained some new capability, I used it more. What I started noticing around 2007 was that I seemed to be losing my ability to concentrate. Not just when I was sitting at a computer. Even when the computer was off and I tried to read a book, to sustain a single train of thought, I found it difficult.

Do you see this cognitive shift resulting in tension between generations?

I'm wary of painting this as a generational divide. One thing we've learned about the brain is that it's malleable throughout our lives. I'm 51 years old. Half of my life was spent in the pre-computer era. Nevertheless I'm suffering these same cognitive effects. The mental effects of staring into a screen are the same no matter what your age. It annoys me a bit to see middle-aged people pretending this is just something that influences the young. It influences everyone. There's no doubt, however, that the consequences would be more severe if you were brought up from a very young age getting your information through computers and smartphones.

The danger for the young is never developing the mental facility for contemplative thought, whether deep reading or being able to follow a single argument over a long stretch. I worry that we're training children to be distracted, to confuse getting access to information with intelligence. There seems to be a redefinition of our idea of intelligence itself that is emerging. The emphasis is on how quickly you can find information, rather than what you do with it, how deeply you think about it, and how you weave it into the knowledge you already have.

How do you think individual development--of minds, of personalities--is affected by the digital age?

It seems pretty clear to me that the richness of our knowledge and our memory hinges on our ability to pay attention. If we're perpetually distracted from a young age--the average American teen already sends or receives about 3,000 text messages a month--we will likely sacrifice some of the depth and distinctiveness of our intellects and our personalities. That's not to say there won't be compensations, and it's not to say that we'll be stupid, but it is to say that we'll be less interesting.