Spending time on the internet is reducing our ability to focus on one task at a time – and it means we no longer store facts in our brains. Our lives have been forever changed by gaining access to infinite amounts of information at the touch of a button, but the way our head works has too.

A new review looking into the effect of the online world on our brain functions from researchers in the UK, US and Australia, has drawn a number of surprising conclusions. The review focused on the world wide web’s influence in three areas: attention spans, memory, and social cognition. It notes that the internet is now ‘unavoidable, ubiquitous, and a highly functional aspect of modern living’ before diving into how it has changed our society….

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The review found that people who regularly multitask online, by checking different social media sites such as Facebook or streaming entertainment, struggle to focus on a single task. Joseph Firth, another author of the review, told Medical News Today: ‘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.

Another aspect dealt with in the review is memory, and our reliance on the internet for information. People are less and less likely memorize information – in fact, one study found people are more likely to know where certain details could be found online, rather than the content itself….

Finally, the review examined the differences between online and offline social interaction. Although social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram mean people interact with more users, friendship groups have stayed roughly the same size. These five hierarchical layers – primary partners, intimate relationships, best friends, close friends, and all friends – range from 1 to 150 in size, but appear to be the same online and offline.

The review notes: ‘Given the evidence above, an appropriate metaphor for the relationship between online and real‐world sociality could be a “new playing field for the same game”.’ However, where the two differ can cause problems – acceptance and rejection can be quantified in ‘friends’ or ‘followers’, rather than staying ambiguous….

The full findings of the study were published in the journal World Psychiatry

(Excerpted from Daily Mail.)