My experience is that its mostly an impediment, see socializing here instead of thinking deeply. But I've also used the internet to great effect when getting u

My experience is that its mostly an impediment, see socializing here instead of thinking deeply. But I've also used the internet to great effect when getting up to speed on a research topic because I had lots of access to high quality texts and tools (citation manager for tracking, spreadsheet for glossary of terms). Notably that didn't involve any communications, just searches.