When you search online to learn about something new–call it “concept x”–what is your research methodology? Do you find the first link, perhaps the Wikipedia page or some official website, and read it linearly? If so, your process is analogous to traditional research. You search the vast databases of information, you locate your article of interest, and you read it.
This is rarely how people do things today. Web articles have links to other web articles. Maybe the Wikipedia page called “concept x” is closely tied to “concept y,” so you click a link to learn about that. You find yourself searching through a series of links. Do these links enhance the learning experience, or do they draw attention away?
Citing a book called The Shallows, there is evidence to show that “linear learning” is the best approach. In one study, subjects performed much better on a comprehension test when reading a linear form of a short story than when reading a version that contained hyperlinks. Somewhat similarly, a university study found that students retained lecture information better when not using computers than when using computers, even if the things they were looking up on their computers were relevant to the lecture.
I can’t say I agree or disagree with the claims Carr makes in his book, at least not yet. What about a student who is reading a confusing book, and frequently needs the dictionary to understand what is going on? Is the process not comparable? If you can follow a lecture perfectly, the internet is probably distracting. But what if you can’t? Is it not better to search up diagrams online, alternative explanations, and so on? Or should lectures be attended to in a linear sort of way, start to finish, with supplementary research left for later on?
But then again, maybe it’s a lot simpler. I mean…how many people are actually looking up relevant information, and how many of them are on Facebook/Snapchat/Slickdeals/Reddit/NYTimes/Tumblr?