To me, surfing the internet and reading in a quiet room are two quite different things. Surfing the internet has a far more number of distractions than reading in a quiet room. However, in my opinion, both share some similarities.

When I surf the internet, I usually make my daily stop to Facebook, where I chat with my friends or upload some pictures. Facebook would have to be my main distraction when surfing on the Internet, since there is so much you can do. There is also Youtube, Myspace, etc. I do have to admit that surfing the internet is far more interesting than sitting in a quiet room reading. The internet just has so many different places that you can discover. Also, on the Internet, you can find your sources much more quickly than sitting in a library searching in books for hours and hours. You type in the topic that you want and in an instant at least five hundred website appear in front of your eyes.

Although surfing the Internet is a blast, sitting in a quiet room reading is where I can truly concentrate. In a quiet room, my thoughts come clearly in my head: I don’t have to hear the annoying sounds of cars honking or neighbors loudly talking to each other. In the twenty minutes that I spent in that room, I read more than spending an hour on the computer. In the quiet room, there are no distractions near me, so I won’t get carried away. If I want to study for a test, I usually won’t sit down at my computer, I usually go to my quiet room where I can get all the information into my brain, without Facebook trying to distract me.

Nicholas Carr’s argument in “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, stated that the Internet has caused a decline in our nation’s reading habits. Though I agree with part of his argument, I also disagree with him. The internet has expanded our research department to our nation. With all these different sources, it is faster to find answers and to ask questions. However, the Internet also has its distractions. People like me, spend their time on the computer unwisely. Distractions are basically sprawled across the pages on the Internet. Sometimes I get carried away but most of the times the Internet has helped me complete my last minute projects. Although the Internet has it good points and bad, sitting in a quiet boring room would still have to be my ideal place for thinking and studying.