This is great, I finally have a great excuse to use when my parents barge in at three in the morning.

"But mom, I'm learning!"

Surely this is entirely dependant on "WHAT" you are useing google to look up :P

Doesn't it indicate that you have trained certain parts of your brain by having used the internet a lot already? I bet that if there was a similar test executed with paper encyclopaedia's, where the no-internet-group were very proficient with them, while the pro-internet-group never used them, then suddenly the paper encyclopaedia readers were the smarter ones. Perhaps not in the same ways though.

That's quite nice to know. I always think that somehow computers will be the death of me... Electric shock? Death by CD tray to the face? Stay tuned...

S.H.A.R.P.:
Doesn't it indicate that you have trained certain parts of your brain by having used the internet a lot already? I bet that if there was a similar test executed with paper encyclopaedia's, where the no-internet-group were very proficient with them, while the pro-internet-group never used them, then suddenly the paper encyclopaedia readers were the smarter ones. Perhaps not in the same ways though.

Which is why I'm really thankful I didn't much start using the internet 'till college- I got to frolic about like a healthy little girl rather than stare at the monitor and use paper references.

Google doesn't make you smarter, it makes you lazier.

Yay por.... i mean Studying Asian culture for school makes me smarter, ya thats what I was doing

C@n I haS SM25t N0w?

GodsOneMistake:
Yay por.... i mean Studying Asian culture for school makes me smarter, ya thats what I was doing

What on Google does not lead to...Asian culture? Or blond culture?

I find it best to search through a filter. That is why my homepage is the Wikipedia. The footnotes then lead to authoritative sources that have been read by someone else first, passed some quality bar (no matter how low) and tend to be free from advertising. Other forums on specific areas of interest give me query-leads which I can then hunt for using Google. However, I am prepared to use Google Similar Images, Cuil, Bing (for video), Amazon (to sneak a look at books with "Look inside") and Wolfram|Alpha.

Basically, I have just been a hypertextual bookworm for the last few years. I save most of what I find as I regard the web as ephemeral.

Hence: 2000+ .pdfs

To paraphrase that other article: A collective "duh" resounds from the internet community.

I call bull on this research - there are so many extraenous variables its not funny, you are comparing people who are extremely familiar with a particular task to perform that task and then directly compare them with people who don't do that, how is that telling you anything??
Far better to get them to do a task which is neutral between the two groups, neither one should have more experience at it.

It might just be my eyes at 1am but this news is flawed.
The group that is experienced with the internet is thinking of search methods and search engines to use, along with any specific websites they may recall to help them. The noob group is thinking: "Internet please give me an answer because I don't know what I'm doing."
Group A knows what they are doing but they could fail any number of aptitude tests; group B could be a bunch of MENSA brand prodigies but when they don't know what they are doing, they don't know what they are doing.

Nicholas Carr shares my opinion that google is making us into a bunch of chimps with no attention span for anything: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

So, does it make you smarter, or just more knowledgeable in useless crap?

with the amount of people who don't know how to find anything it's not that surprising. even when a lot of people use google they don't know what to look for

Talon_Kale:
Surely this is entirely dependant on "WHAT" you are useing google to look up :P

You're probably right... Shit

I would hardly call a study with only 24 subjects a "research". Please do this again with 100 or 1000 people and come again.

Lulz nice 8D!

Here's another "The Internet Isn't All Bad Mum"-esque fact.

Did you know that watching TV or playing video games (especially playing video games) makes your eyes stronger?

You get trained in differing between contrasts. Tell that to your parents o.0...
I think 'twas a danish or german study.
I only saw the headlines and a brief summary, but it appears everything about watching too much TV, or playing too much video games, is all BS.

So I might be wasting my life on the internet, but at least I'm getting smarter while doing so.

It definitely does not mean you are smarter. It just means that you are tech savvy enough to use resources if they are provided to you.

Jon Etheridge:
It's pretty much like using a giant virtual library when you think about it. Except you don't have that nagging wench in the corner going "shhhh".

...just with more tentacle rape, lol catz and facials.

CantFaketheFunk:

S.H.A.R.P.:
Doesn't it indicate that you have trained certain parts of your brain by having used the internet a lot already? I bet that if there was a similar test executed with paper encyclopaedia's, where the no-internet-group were very proficient with them, while the pro-internet-group never used them, then suddenly the paper encyclopaedia readers were the smarter ones. Perhaps not in the same ways though.

From what I understand, this wasn't as if they were being judged on how quickly they could find things. It's that MRI scans showed simply higher brain activity in complex thinking cores.

His point still stands, and I tend to agree: users familiar with the tool exhibited more brain activity when presented with something they were trained in. If the other users had been given an activity that they were more familiar with, the tables may have been turned. This study primarily supports the thesis that "Internet users access more of their brain when using the internet than non-internet users do."

My personal theory on google-fu is that there are two forces at work: One, positive feedback when I search Google and get the results that I want, resulting in my brain thinking along similar patterns the next time I want to find something. Two, Google honing their algorithms to produce the results that I want based on what I put in. Are those same patterns that my brain is learning useful in contexts other than getting what I want from Google? This study certainly doesn't get anywhere near proving so (based on my expert opinion, garnered only from reading the synopsis the internet so kindly fed my attention-addled brain).

BolognaBaloney:
This is great, I finally have a great excuse to use when my parents barge in at three in the morning.

"But mom, I'm learning!"

I already have mine. [Go Away]
but, yeah this might cause less of an arguement.

Google used to be my homepage, but now it's the Escapist. So ha on you, Google.

But really, there's not much of a comparison. What would the tests show if the subjects were asked to find a certain piece of information in a book? Or in a room? Or amongst a group of people?

Mackinator:

BolognaBaloney:
This is great, I finally have a great excuse to use when my parents barge in at three in the morning.

"But mom, I'm learning!"

I already have mine. [Go Away]
but, yeah this might cause less of an arguement.

[Go away] never seems to work for me. I normally end up telling her I'm asleep (while she stares at me in front of my laptop) until she goes away.

Jon Etheridge:
It's pretty much like using a giant virtual library when you think about it. Except you don't have that nagging wench in the corner going "shhhh".

Instead that nagging wench is porn, and she's whispering "credit cardssss"

From the way it's typed up here, the data does not show that using the Internet makes you smarter. It demonstrates that those using the Internet constantly are smarter, but does not seem to examine for the root cause.

Did these scientist have some part of the study that eliminated the possibility that people who use the internet more often (especially in 50yrs old+) were already likely to be smarter, one that was simply not covered in this article? Because right now it tells me that Internet Users are smarter than Non-Internet Users, but doesn't search for causality. Because in statistics, correlation =/= causality. Maybe dumber people tend not to use complicated objects. Also, what's to say it's the internet specifically causing it? It could just be computer users. I think it would be pretty difficult to own a computer yet avoid the internet.

HobbesMkii:
It demonstrates that those using the Internet constantly are smarter,...

Not that I'm going to disagree with your point that they're failing the correlation/causation dealy, but even what little you're allowing them [^quoted] is more than they've earned. They've demonstrated that people who use the internet have heightened brain activity when using the internet. If you want to define "smart" as "heightened brain activity when using the internet", then your above statement works, but otherwise, under any broader definition of "smart", they're a long way from showing even that correlation. Let alone, as you point out, any form of causation.

EDIT: Sorry if I'm a little overzealous... studies like this and the things they purport to "show" are a pet peeve of mine.