An Issue Worth Examining, When Researched With an Open Mind

As an initial reaction to the article, I agree with what one commenter said:

Are there idiots amongst my fellow high school and college students? You better believe it. But the rumors of Generation Y's demise have been, to paraphrase Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated. Are there plenty of self-absorbed, anti-intellectual, vacuous, whorish, fame-driven, disrespectful punks? Of course, and MTV surely isn't helping by perpetuating that machine. But the more I reach out to my peers, the more I'm surprised at how many are far more intelligent and intellectually curious than I'd given them credit for.

And I would add that aside from the “self-absorbed…punks” there is a huge population of people who actively defy that teen stereotype: people who want to learn and who fight the apathy towards knowledge and humanity. Perhaps the author has some valid points, but I have to believe that her generalizations are painfully inaccurate for the majority of the population (don’t know how to use a ruler? don’t know the days of the week or who fought in WWII? I suspect a parenting issue on the author’s part). This lowers her credibility. Her examples seem to be more the exception than the rule.

That said, some of her points are worth examining:

1. I agree that video games, Facebook, and Netflix can be a distraction and even an addiction: they inhibit the desire to learn and discipline to work. I know for me The Office, which is always available on my instant Netflix streaming, is always a temptation I have to ignore in order to get work done (as it is now). And as the author argues, it could perhaps become a dangerous vehicle for creating addictive behavior, even outside of the world of technology (though she offers no supporting data). However, distractions have always been ubiquitous—before Netflix there was still TV, before iTunes there was still radio; why are this generation’s distractions necessarily worse?

2. The Internet can be a vehicle for laziness: I no longer have to memorize dates or conversion tables—because all that information is easily accessible online. This potentially inhibits one type of learning—rote memorization. But that is only one aspect of intellectual ability. The effects of the Internet are positive for other aspects: as I (we) are using the Internet for this assignment and this blog, it is facilitating discussion and challenging our critical thinking skills. I think blogs are some of the best launching pads for pooling knowledge, thinking critically, and reaching solutions.

3. I consider myself a heavy user of technology (though perhaps not relative to the kids the author targets) and I do find myself easily distracted; as I was reading the line: “Heavy users of multimedia have a very hard time filtering out distracting information, (page2)” I was distracted by noise around me. Perhaps she is correct in saying our collective attention span and ability for “top-down attention” has withered—but I’m not prepared to simply take her word for it based exclusively on anecdotal evidence. She offers no proof that technology is the underlying cause or in fact that our attention span has truly shortened at all.

4. This constant stream of addictive technology also interferes with personal/intimate interactions. Now we do so much of our communication on our phones and online that maybe it is impeding our ability to confront people, to be social, etc. in person. I can see that evolving into a much more serious problem of degrading moral standards: it is easier to hurt someone if you don’t have to face them in person. Are we headed down the path of losing our humanity completely, as in Lord of the Flies? I wouldn’t go nearly so far as the author suggests; we are not so ignorant or passionless to allow virtual communication to replace physical interaction completely. Yes, new technology requires new standards, but humanity has a perpetually brutal, inhumane history: it’s nothing new.

5. I have a problem with the author exclusively pinning teens. Adults are aggravating the problems the author describes just as much as kids. Adults are largely responsible for teaching their children the value of personal interaction, the importance of leaning and furthering the realm of knowledge, and of self-discipline. Adults are, if anything, encouraging this migration to technology by selling World of Warcraft and Netflix and iPhones to kids, and reinforcing apathetic behaviors toward learning by allowing their kids to spend six hours a day gaming. And who says it’s only kids who own iPhones, who have Facebook accounts, who watch marathons of their favorite shows on Netflix? Adults are just as guilty.

6. She suggests that the standard of education has lowered since the days of her youth. That is another blanket assumption without evidence. My education was first-rate: my parents have said many times that it was much better than their pre-college education (“Dante’s Inferno in 10^th grade? I didn’t read that until my junior year in college!” And they attended Smith College and Dartmouth College.) Further, my peers were intelligent, engaged and talented—and they became such while using Facebook, the Internet, and texting. Obviously I can’t make a blanket assumption either, but at least I see efforts being made to raise the standard of education.

7. As a side note, I like the author’s line, “we subsist on a steady state of what-we-already-believe. (page 8)” I think that’s true, but what does that have to do with the author’s thesis? Close-mindedness and shortsightedness are certainly issues in today’s society, but I find it somewhat irrelevant. It is, first of all, certainly not unique to our generation, and second, it’s unrelated to technology’s degrading effects on our capacity to learn.

Though there might be real problems with our teaching and learning strategies, I don’t think that technology itself is the cause. Surely there are underlying issues in society in terms of our values and our standard of discipline that lead to addictions to World of Warcraft, Facebook, etc., but then the onslaught of technology is only a manifestation of a deeper problem. To find solutions, our definition of “teaching,” “learning, “ and what we deem “valuable” or “essential” knowledge must be examined. As she says, new ways of learning are different, but perhaps not inherently worse (page 4). We need to analyze this within the context of a world—our world—in which technology does exist, not imagining a pre-technology world without these problems, which never existed. Then maybe we can start making conclusions.