Is Google doing more or less for our society?

In today’s society everyone relies on Google as their main source of information. This is not necessarily a bad thing because we have several resources available to us with just the touch of a button. However, we are spending almost all of our free-time and even time we should be working searching for answers on the web and not allowing our brain's to think for itself. This is where the real problem lies because we live in a society where it has become socially acceptable to be on our computers or cellphones at any time of the day even if we are with our friends or family. 

I have noticed over the past couple years that I have been guilty of this myself. Even when we are well aware of our actions we are so addicted to feeling connected with the media. If per say that Google decided to shut down all of its service the use of the  Internet would decrease immensely in terms of productivity and usability because many individuals in today’s society can not go a day without using a Google product.  Nicholas Carr’s article  he elaborates on an illustration by Guy Billout which I find to be an extremely powerful message because this is how many people I talk to feel and agree about the use of Google. It talks about how he feels something different going on with his brain and how it retains and relays informations. He explains that his mind can’t focus when he is reading a simple book or an article because he gets super fidgety and his mind starts to wonder. I feel like this has happened to be over the years as well. If I am assigned to read a long chapter, it is so hard for me to sit down and actually comprehend what I am reading after the 4th page. When I am writing my research papers I have to take about five to ten breaks so that I can actually stay focused. It is pretty sad that this is what it has come to because we don’t allow our brains to think for itself and we rely to much on the information we find online. 

Google has enabled us to open up so many channels of information and it makes information more easily accessible because almost anyone can get this information but it is also changing our memory and attention span. It is important to be able to critically think about situations so that we can improve our own though processes in different aspects. I don’t believe people need to stop using Google or the Internet as a whole, I just think that we need to rely on it less.