The “online brain”: how the Internet may be changing our cognition
By J. Firth, John B. Torous, Brendon Stubbs, J. A. Firth, G. Steiner, L. Smith, Mario Alvarez-Jimenez, J. Gleeson, Davy Vancampfort, Christopher J. Armitage and 1 more. World Psychiatry, 2019
524 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The impact of the Internet across multiple aspects of modern society is clear. However, the influence that it may have on our brain structure and functioning remains a central topic of investigation. Here we draw on recent psychological, psychiatric and neuroimaging findings to examine several key hypotheses on how the Internet may be changing our cognition. Specifically, we explore how unique features of the online world may be influencing: a) attentional capacities, as the constantly evolving stream of online information encourages our divided attention across multiple media sources, at the expense of sustained concentration; b) memory processes, as this vast and ubiquitous source of online information begins to shift the way we retrieve, store, and even value knowledge; and c) social cognition, as the ability for online social settings to resemble and evoke real‐world social processes creates a new interplay between the Internet and our social lives, including our self‐concepts and self‐esteem. Overall, the available evidence indicates that the Internet can produce both acute and sustained alterations in each of these areas of cognition, which may be reflected in changes in the brain. However, an emerging priority for future research is to determine the effects of extensive online media usage on cognitive development in youth, and examine how this may differ from cognitive outcomes and brain impact of uses of Internet in the elderly. We conclude by proposing how Internet research could be integrated into broader research settings to study how this unprecedented new facet of society can affect our cognition and the brain across the life course.
Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4c4ee2438f19c5269187dd68ba2ea0f8044adf14
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
- John B. Torous
- S. Bucci
- I. Bell
- J. Firth
- José Gómez-Galán
- Matcheri S. Keshavan
- L. Kessing
- M. Faurholt-Jepsen
Citations in the corpus
- The growing field of digital psychiatry: current evidence and the future of apps, social media, chatbots, and virtual reality (2021, background): “The impact of social media on the developing brain also re mains an unresolved 61 yet frequently discussed topic, especially as the pandemic has forced increasing reliance on technology to connect people.”
- Social Networks Consumption and Addiction in College Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Educational Approach to Responsible Use (2020, background): “The ways of interacting with the environment have also changed [8,9].”