The web changes the human brain
Are you are a digital native or digital immigrant? The fact that you’re reading a blog suggests you might be a native, Gary Small’s new book “iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind” might have the answer.
We’re all familiar with the concept of evolution, even if certain US vice-presidential candidates have a few issues with Mr Darwin’s theory. But did you know we were evolving at such a rate, in fact simply by reading this blog you’re brain is changing.
According to Gary’s research those of us who are tech-savvy and use the Internet daily display twice as much brain activity in regions of the brain responsible for decision-making and complex reasoning. According to the neuroscientist ‘reading’ the web stimulates more regions of the brain than the printed word.
Gary then identifies two types of web-users that display quite different brain activity. The digital native, often younger people that have never known a world without the web and the digital immigrant, frequently older and with brains hardwired long before they first saw the Internet.
It’s the digital immigrant, who is better at face to face interaction than navigating websites, that poses some interesting questions for information architecture and page design. The digital immigrant takes things one step at a time, and acts methodically.
