Are Search Engines Making Students Dumber?

Edward Tenner's recent NY Times op-ed piece suggested that search engines are making today's students dumber. David Schatsky at Jupiter Research quipped:

"Will a new generation of students fail to develop library research skills the way my parents' generation did? Probably. But then I've lost the art of hunting and gathering."

And running conversations on three separate IM screens while reading email, blogging, and talking on the phone will make you forget how to read newspapers.

I would amend that. Search engines are making students lazier.

I know a lot of people who complain about not finding what they want with Google or Yahoo! Most just don't know how to pare down the search. The vast majority have never done a search with a "-" to exclude terms.

Those who study library science are likely to understand classification systems and labels enough to get around this. But ultimately, it's just laziness, and I blame the "I'm feeling lucky" button.

I have read this before and I do not think students are getting dumber or lazier, just more efficient. Technology is developing multi-tasking skill. Recently, I finshed my Masters in Communications online. Technology helped me access research engines from home on my own time. Everyone is forgetting a newspaper. What's that?

If you haven't gotten your feet wet with New Media, you are way behind the curve. Technology has made me smarter and more well-rounded because I am exposed to different opinions and there are no geographical bounderies.

My only reservation on this is that it's sometimes hard to know the source or the date of information or opinions - unlike a newspaper where you know and 'trust' (ahem!) the named journalists, it can be harder for less well educated people than Ike and Lauren to filter out the propaganda.

Who cares? My son sure as heck doesn't and he's studying what I believe is a nice subset for the future: media, psychology, ICT and design. Anyone want to argue with that?