“We have to teach older people how to use the technology and younger people how to use their face-to-face human contact skills.” —Gary Small

Gary Small, director of UCLA’s Center on Aging, remembers when Internet search was first developed; back then, we saw it as a tool that could help us become more thoughtful and free up time for creative thinking.

Now people are saying that Google search has stolen our creativity and is making us stupid. So Small and his team decided to investigate what a brain actually looks like when it’s searching online, using a group of older people as test subjects.

Half the test subjects were Internet savvy; half were Internet newbies. The results: Older people who learned how to use a computer to search for information developed far greater brain activity in the thinking part of the brain.

Watch and learn what else the scientists discovered in this fascinating video!