Online Reading Is In

Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”claims that with the advancement of new technology it is faster and easier for people to communicate with others and to learn something new, however, we are slowly losing our ability to read. Carr supports his idea by pointing out that reading has turned into a “skimming activity.” People often go online to do research and they seem to just skim through articles instead of reading it toughly. He also includes his personal experience wherein he can’t concentrate on reading a book, he states “I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin to look for something else to do” (2008, pg. 92). In addition to personal experiences he adds the experience of pathologist Bruce Friedman, who at one point could read War and Peace, has now “lost the ability to do that” (2008, pg. 93). Carr then explains how we do more reading now than we did in the 1970s and 1980s, but the reading we do now is a different kind of reading, one where we spend too much time reading texts of the internet and messages off our cell phones. He backs up his statement using Maryanne Wolf as an example, as she states “when we read online, we tend to become ‘mere decoders of information’” (2008, pg. 94). Overall, Carr’s idea on the internet is that it is slowly making humans are becoming machinelike, while machines are becoming more humanlike.

Carr’s overall generalization of the internet made me disagree with him. Yes, reading and concentrating has become difficult due to the internet becoming a kind of distraction, but it could also be helpful at times. With the advancements of technology, we can take reading with us everywhere we go, not in the form of a book, but in the form of our cellphones. New applications have been created to allow us to read e-books, and even books by aspiring writers. I find reading online a much easier way to read than reading in a form of a book. People may think that I spend too much time on social media because I’m always on my phone, but what they don’t know is that I use my phone to read books on Wattpad. Being able to read on my phone makes it easier for me, because I could read just about anywhere. Statistics have shown that teens and young adults are among those who use Wattpad as a way to read, whether it be online, or on the go. Wattpad has been getting good reviews from people all over the world, with over 8 million visitors visiting the site every day. In conclusion, I disagree with Carr’s idea about technology making us lose our ability to read, because with the use of technology people around the world get to read books without having to pull out a paperback or hardcover book from their backpacks, instead they could read books from their phones.