At&T Commercial

[DL_DB]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESMwyVxapck

This AT&T commercial makes the bold statement "Access to the internet makes us smarter." and goes on to ask "What will happen when everyone has it? Let's find out."

Have the people who made this commercial ever been on the internet?

[babykeiff]

To answer that question, compare

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/internet-usage-by-age-gender-race/

to

http://huebler.blogspot.com/

[DL_DB]

Not surprisingly, Internet usage increases with education and income.

This is from the first link you posted. It indicates to me that there may be a link to education and internet access, but I think the correlation is that more highly educated people tend to have more internet access, not that internet access increases your likelihood of obtaining higher education. I was more referring to the reputation of the internet of being a collection of pornography and semi-literate morons *cough* 4chan *cough* than as a useful research and learning tool.

[Yvhuce]

Generally, higher education = higher paycheck and less time actually spent working. As such, people with higher educations have both the money for high speed internet, and the time to spend using it. Many of them also have internet access at work. The main problem is that education itself doesn't always equal intelligence or smartness. The proper corollary is that intelligence/smartness usually = a higher level of education obtained. However, this fails in situations where more intelligent/smarter people can't afford higher education, or have a medical problem which prevents such education (this is why I didn't complete collage). Also, sometimes jocks get higher grades due to being on the sports team (about 5 or so people in my graduating class had to give back their highschool diplomas, and the coach got fired over this).

[DprDJeff]

I can't find it online, but I watched a show on of the educational channels(discovery, learning channel) that showcased a study showing children with internet access do better in school than previous generations. Instant access to information makes learning faster, because instead of searching through books for the answer you can simply ask Google your question. They extrapolated from this study that the internet is also widening the gap in intelligence between low income families and everyone else, because most low income families can't afford computers and/or internet access.

[SamD]

*cough* 4chan *cough*

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