The Article 'Is Google Making Us Stupid' By Nicholas Carr

The Internet is a dangerous place for everyone nowadays because once anyone posts something or say something on the Internet, it is going to stay there forever. The Internet can ruin someone's like within seconds, and people do not have much privacy on the Internet. Also, the Internet is changing the way we do things in our daily life, and people's lives depend on it. However, should people still worry if they are safe online? Because there are companies that track what people are doing on the Internet, they can track people through their emails, cookies on their browsers.

These companies get paid by more prominent corporations to look into people's lives and collect data on them. There are many more threats we should fear about the Internet.

The Internet is changing the way how people do stuff nowadays; people are more likely to go on the Internet to look for something than go to the library and dig through the books.

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In the article 'Is Google Making Us Stupid' by Nicholas Carr, he talks about 'What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles'. He is trying to say is that the Internet is telling him what to read and how to read and messing with this brain. He is right about that because he is an adult and cannot focus on what he is doing online, imagine kids who get distracted by the smallest thing.

It must be hard for them.

The Internet can ruin someone's life within minutes or seconds. It is scary to think that whatever anyone says on the Internet, it is there forever. To think if a person said something terrible years ago, it is crazy to think it could hurt them in the future. That is what happens to William; he was in a Facebook group chat with other students that got into Harvard University. They would send edgiest memes, and they all would compete against each other on who can send the edgiest meme. In a podcast by NPR titled 'Online Behavior, Real-Life Consequences: The Unfolding Of A Social Media Scandal,' William says, 'there were definitely memes made about the Holocaust, about the scandal in Catholicism, of, you know, young boys and priests. Yeah, it was a lot of the stuff that's, like, you don't want to touch in, like, normal, everyday conversation unless you're condemning it' (William 21:14 - 21:40). In that group chat, they were making fun of things; people are not supposed to, and they thought it was okay. Eventually, Harvard found out about this group chat, and his admission got revoked. He worked hard to get into Harvard, but because of this, group chat on the Internet caused an admission into Harvard and ruined his life and chance to get into a better university.

People's information is never safe on the Internet because there are hackers that can steal credit card information, social security, and other important stuff. However, everyone knows that, but people do not know that when they search for anything on google. They get an ad a couple of hours later, showing what they searched for similar to what they searched. In this article, 'Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search' by Carole Cadwalladr. She talks about 'We don't realize that the Facebook page we are looking at, the Google page, the ads that we are seeing, the search results we are using, are all being personalized to us'. She is trying to say that we do not realize it because we do not have anything to compare this to. When talking about Cambridge Analytica, causing internet users to lose their privacy quickly.

Cambridge Analytica is a company that got private information of more than 50 million people through Facebook. Those users did not know that someone knows all their personal information. That company also used that information in the 2016 U.S. elections. Donald Trump's campaign team hired the company and used that personal information about people to show them a political ad to change their minds into voting for Trump. That is pretty scary that someone who got your information through a company he hired, and he used that information against those people and changed their mind into voting for him and making him the President of The United States of America.

The Internet could be scary place for anyone because people are not sure that their information is safe online or not, and they might to scared to say something on the Internet because if they say something wrong it might hurt them in the future, and if they use Internet for everything they don't stay focus on they what they are doing, and it could hurt them academically. However, the Internet is not all wrong and scary; some parts of the Internet are helpful. How people have worldwide information at their fingertips, but they are scared to use it because companies like Cambridge Analytica that steals innocent people's private information, then give them ad according to their preference and try to change their mind about the election. People need to trust the Internet again, but for that to happen, Google and Facebook and other social media sites should let people have access to their algorithm. How they are getting these adds and if their private information has not been taken without their permission.