As with yesterday's discussion about freedom of speech, the internet is a complicated topic which I feel very strongly about. I could write a novel about this without much effort. But since according to Mark Bauerlein, no one born after 1982 reads those anymore, I'll try to keep this relatively short.
We are not the dumbest generation. The internet does not make you stupid. Failing to remember trivial facts is not an indicator of low intelligence, because, as we know, comprehension and beyond is what really matters (Quad D!); instead, it's an indicator of the fact that the internet allows us to store information elsewhere. Our internal hard-drives are no longer the only thing available to us; we can store all the information we'd ever need on wikipedia, leaving more room in our brains for doing the sorts of things a computer can't--higher order thought processes.
In fact, many of the things Bauerlein posits are negative consequences of the internet age--narcissism, illiteracy, pop culture obsession, microscopic attention spans--are either patently untrue or viewed through a lens that is, itself, outdated. I'd like to see his explanation for the fact that young adult literature has exploded in the same time frame as the internet, or what he thinks of the Vlogbrothers--two video bloggers who discuss the world intelligently, critically, and honestly, as well as educate their viewers on science, history, and literature, and who have thousands of teenage fans. Is that not a powerful example of the good the net does for those who've grown up in its clutches? Or are their 700 thousand subscribers--and the millions of teens reading YA--just outliers, inconvenient data points in his narrow-minded view of the damage caused by the internet?
And there's something else Bauerlein fails to understand--the internet does change the way people think, behave, and develop. But it's not something to be afraid of, it's something to adapt to. If the internet makes it so that people don't remember things they can find online, so what? Pretty soon there will be no one to insist on the importance of rote memorization. If the net is actually going to make sweeping changes to the way people think, it's going to change society too, because the people are what make the society. Meanwhile, he's writing this from the point of view of the current paradigm, which will be gone in two generations.
He says that two-thirds of undergrads score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory--but all that does, by definition, is raise the average. In fact, that statistic is very telling of his viewpoint--he's essentially comparing students today to students of the past and framing the results negatively, as though the past test-takers who created this 'average' in the first place are better than those of today. But I don't think change is not inherently bad, contrary to an unexamined assumption which Bauerlein seems to stand on for most of his article.
I object to this article so strongly in part because it insults me personally. It speaks of teenagers' "brazen disregard of books and learning" as I sit reading it in a room full of my personal book collection. It tells me that the internet will make me stupid while I consistently use it to talk to people with different worldviews, learn more about topics I find interesting, and generally remain as informed as possible about the world and the morals involved in navigating it. It bemoans "juvenile mental habits" caused by the web while I actively try to think critically about the things I read and watch, with the assistance of a dialogue made possible by, you guessed it, the internet.
Bauerlein's article speaks of teenagers as though they're a different species, a faceless group who are helplessly manipulated by their environment without any control in the matter, rather than full, living, thinking humans who actually have unique personalities and exist, like everyone, along a spectrum of intelligence and thoughtfulness. His drastic oversimplification of the teenage experience has the potential to do much more damage than the internet ever will.
(A side note, to Mr. Roush--I feel like these blogs are some of the best things I've written for this class, and I was wondering if you'd consider commenting on any of the posts?)
I completely agree. It's invalid to discredit a generation simply because they act differently, learn differently, or use a different medium. Although I tried to separate myself from using the internet as a comprehension tool, a way of communicating and organizing and cataloging data for myself to be critiqued by other intelligent peoples, in my argument (as it didn't fit the medium of my piece), I, too, feel massively offended by the articles. The entire piece and idea, in fact, is offensive to the whole of this new generation-- a rather tall order for just one man.
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