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PEOPLE WHO HAVE access to the internet are less willing to say they know something.
That is according to new research from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
The team asked 100 participants a series of general knowledge questions, such as the capital of France. Participants only said whether they knew the answer or not.
For half of the study, participants had access to the internet. They had to look up the answer when they responded that they did not know the answer. In the other half of the study, participants did not have access to the internet.
The team found that the people who had access to the web were about 5% more likely to say that they did not know the answer to the question.
Furthermore, in some contexts, the people with access to the internet reported feeling as though they knew less compared to the people without access.
“With the ubiquity of the Internet, we are almost constantly connected to large amounts of information. And when that data is within reach, people seem less likely to rely on their own knowledge,” said Professor Evan Risko, Canada Research Chair in Embodied and Embedded Cognition.
“Our results suggest that access to the Internet affects the decisions we make about what we know and don’t know.”
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Makes me doubt how smart some people are, “press like and type 6 and see what happens” “We have 400 iPhone 20s to give away as boxes are unsealed, press like and share”
Liked and shared!
Liked and shared!
Red Rose for me plz plz plz
Type amen and this dying child won’t die
1 like – 1 euro
1 share = 5 euro
Amen and shared hope he gets better
And give them a hug like a bear?
And like it if you do not want it to get wetter? lol.
And facebooks Enda doing mein Heir?
Jamie…
It’s important that when you are reporting on ‘New Research’ that you provide the reference to the paper, or a link. I would firstly have some questions about the research methodology – it is really not clear from the reporting here (but should be available in the original paper). How were the 100 people split? How were they randomised? Was it split 50:50 or did all the participants do one arm of the study (no internet) and then the other. Secondly the results do not seem to be impressive – around 5% difference? Again, difficult to know without the results, but does that mean 2.5 more people out of the 50 who had access were reporting ignorance? I would have questions… In addition, ‘about 5%’ – that’s pretty small. Imagine you flipped a coin 100 times and the first 50 flips you got tails 22 times, and the second 50 flips you got tails 27 times. You would probably put that down to chance. Why do the authors feel that there is enough of a difference between the groups that this is significant? Certainly it’s not enough to provide the very definitive sounding opening statement that was provided.
Does any of this matter? It’s just a bit of fun!
Unfortunately this is about the same standard of reporting of more important medical research. I often see very dubious health articles here on this website, and among daily newspapers. Often I meet people who have made important health decisions based on such nonsense, so it’s important that reporters know what they’re talking about.
I think it is 50/50 good to have but has caused Huge problems personally I love the fact I can sit at home and know what’s going on in the world around me and get involved if I so choose
Good!
I’d never have known about this pointless research without access to the internet…..
There are known knows , these are things we know we know …………
web access is a double-edged sword. it seems to make smart people smarter and dumb people dumber.
most topics are freely available to outright study online or just get more information about parts of any subject. however there is a lot of bs too, like the iphone 5s competitions other posters here were making fun of, then there are endless amounts of pointless celebrity gossip and loaded news stories.
the online media can be used as a tool for astroturfing and manufacturing mis-informed consent, spreading propaganda for war etc. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJgDzB_Zc6TJyuaMYjHbuPdoJhjE7_6HC
I always doubt my spelling!!
I use it to check mine and to provide links to prove my point but google has gone down and not as good a search engine as it was once. You look something up and you get pure nonsense, the only way to know anything is to have a black book of web addresses…
The search engines are hopeless now and I do not know why?
Everyone knows that “the capital of France” is a F lol.
have your say