Spending too much time on the internet may physically change a person’s brain structure, according to a new study.

Researchers in China did MRIs on the brains of 18 college students who spent about 10 hours a day online. Compared with a control group who spent less than two hours a day online, these students had less gray matter, the “thinking” part of the brain.

The study also showed that multitasking on the internet can make you forget how to read human emotions.  Clifford Nass, a social psychologist at Stanford, says that when he showed online multitaskers pictures of faces, they had a hard time identifying the emotions they were showing.

Online multitasking makes real life appear slow and boring and too much time online can make you forget how to read emotions in others, the study showed.  Online life can lead to “popcorn” brain.

“We can’t just sit quietly and wait for a bus, and that’s too bad, because our brains need that down time to rest, to process things,”  researcher David Levy said.

Constant online stimulation can activate pleasure centres in the brain. The brain is wired to crave the instant pleasures that online multitasking can give. But, the brain needs time to process and rest – in real life.