The Problem With Google

Similar to the author of this article, I too used to find reading a novel or article almost like second nature. There would be times where I would find a book, sit down and just read for hour after hour. Now, it's becoming more and more difficult to find pleasure in reading. For the longest time I just said to myself "I'm a teenger. No teenager can sit still for hours and stare at a page full of words." But after reading this article I know have a better idea of why this rather unfortunate dilemma is occurring. It has also brought a strange comfort knowing that I'm not the only one suffering from this upsetting lack of patience.

My parents have told me time and time again that they never had the luxury of the internet. That they were always stuck with paging through book after book searching for the right information. Personally, I can't even begin to comprehend not having the web to find the answers to my every question. It is getting to the point where I don't even want to think about not having easy access to everything. Sure, being able to find everything you need just by clicking the mouse a few times it great, but at the same time, after reading this article, part of me thinks that this power is being abused.

Laziness. That's the big problem here. People are getting too lazy to get up and go to a library to do research on whatever. People want the "easy way out", i.e the internet. Now, I shouldn't be one to talk because I do most, if not all, of my research and whatnot on the internet. I'm not proud of the this, but it's hard not to lean towards doing it. This is what I grew up with. Doing things the easy way.

Now, most people say "There's nothing wrong with doing things on the internet." No, there's not. But there is a problem with doing EVERYTHING on the web. Think about it. When you use Google to look things up, you can scan through thousands of pages without even opening to website. For example, if you type in "How to tie a knot" you get 35,100,000 results to pick from. On the first page alone, there are about ten or so results. Under each link there is always a description of what is on the website. It makes it easy and extremely fast to see if that website has what you're looking for or not. Where if you were to use a book, you have to find the book, find the page, and read the section just to know what information was contained. It takes twice as long and more effort, yet you gain more from it. You put more effort into it and in the end you're going to learn more on the subject you were looking up. Whereas for Google, you learn nothing but the information you set out to find.

So yes, after reading this article and thinking very deeply on this subject, I do believe that Google (along with many other search engines) are infact making us stupid.