Use your internet wisely

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Melbourne: High levels of Internet use may change the brain in a way which could affect our attention, memory and social interactions, according to a study. The research, published in the journal World Psychiatry, found the Internet can produce both acute and sustained alterations in specific areas of cognition, which may reflect changes in the brain.

The researchers investigated leading hypotheses on how the Internet may alter cognitive processes, and further examined the extent to which these hypotheses were supported by recent findings from psychological, psychiatric and neuroimaging research. “The key findings of this report are that high-levels of Internet use could indeed impact many functions of the brain,” said Joseph Firth, from the Western Sydney University in Australia.

“For example, the limitless stream of prompts and notifications from the Internet encourages us towards constantly holding a divided attention — which then in turn may decrease our capacity for maintaining concentration on a single task,” said Firth. “Additionally, the online world now presents us with a uniquely large and constantly-accessible resource for facts and information, which is never more than a few taps and swipes away,” he said.

“Given we now have most of the world’s factual information literally at our fingertips, this appears to have the potential to begin changing the ways in which we store, and even value, facts and knowledge in society, and in the brain,” said Firth.

The widespread adoption of these online technologies, along with social media, is also of concern to some teachers and parents, researchers said. The World Health Organization’s 2018 guidelines recommended that young children (aged 2-5) should be exposed to one hour per day, or less, of screen time.