The Dumbest Generation Book Review

It is a habit for the older generation to compare today’s society to their own, and often time, it is not in the favor of the youth. A prominent though is that the current generation is being corrupted by technology and because of it are at a disadvantage intellectual. One certain critic, Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, makes a bold claim that anyone under thirty are part of a generation dumber than any before. However, studies show a different trend. Technology is not lowering intelligence but changing the way people learn. Because of the influence of the digital world, the current generation has shift to a new way of learning that in no way make them dumber.

Technology has advanced a lot more in the past century than it has over a million years. There is millions of new advancements found every day, however, this is making the younger generation a lot less knowledgeable. In the book The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerkein, it states that the teens today are the dumbest generation to live on the planet. It is commonly believed that the young generation is the least knowledgeable generation because of their great reliability on technology, constant distraction by technology, and negative media influences. Although technology helps to make one’s everyday life a lot easier, it is taking away one’s intelligence.

In the text ‘The dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future’ written by English professor Mark Bauerline at Emory University, he continually emphasizes the implication that the millennial generation has intellectual deficiencies because of their dependency on social media and technology. One of his most relevant theories is that the use of video games and the integration of technology into the classroom has negative impacts on a student’s academic performance because “It conditions the minds against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unassisted by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else” (Bauerline 95).

According to multiple studies, adults and teens spend more hours using technology than they do asleep. On average, adults spend 8 hours and 40 minutes per day using laptops, phones, and other electronics. On the other hand, teens spend about 9 hours using various forms of media. Mark Bauerlein, a social critic, professor, and author of The Dumbest Generation claims the under thirty generation is the “dumbest” generation in modern history due to technology. He says there are two differences between past generations and the under thirty generation, general knowledge has gone down and reading habits have vanished. The under-thirty generation is the dumbest because people squander the opportunities technology provides, which proves having an abundance of resources doesn’t assure success.

“Growing Up Tethered” by the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Sherry Turkle, reviews how today’s technology has negatively molded student development through adolescence and into adulthood. First, Turkles explains that this constant communication is creating a cycle where parents are more worried about their child when they do not respond to calls or messages and creating more dependent students that are not aware that they have no freedom or no skills to

In Samuel G. Freedman’s New York Times article, New Class(room) War: Teacher versus Technology, Freedman argues that technology is effecting the younger generations in a negative way inside of the classroom. He explains that while the baby boomer generation sees technology as a useful means for information and communication, the newer generations use technology for counterproductive means such as entertainment and socialization. While it is true that some people utilize technology for unproductive means, the majority of people in the classroom have the self-discipline to pay attention to the professor rather than their phone. Yes, some students may produce worse grades due to technology, but if they didn’t have the technology they would more than likely find a different way to waste time. Freedman exaggerates the issue by acting as if the majority of students are absent-mindedly on their phones during class. There will always be

Alfonzo Porter, a publisher for The Washington Post, is a strong believer that technology has caused massive problems when it comes to educating students. The publisher mentions that student are losing interest in school and becoming more distracted with their cellular devices. In the newspaper, Porter writes, “76 percent of teachers believed students are being conditioned by the internet to find quick answers, leading to a loss of concentration.” Alfonzo Porter believes that students are not taking advantage of technology, instead, they are manipulating it. In today’s modern society, there is a higher percentage of students using their cellphones to find answers, compared to students that are properly reading a book to find solutions to their problems. This issue is leading students becoming less interested in expanding their knowledge.

According to the article “What’s the Matter with the Kids Today”, many adults believe that new technology is consuming the minds of young people. Amy Goldwasser uses research from Common Core surveys as well as Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech to create her argument. Goldwasser uses these examples to explain that if parents and teachers better understood the use of technology, students wouldn’t be punished for their overuse of technology today.

Back in my days, we were not fortunate enough to... Gotcha! Did you expect that to be a dull story like our grandparents or parents may have told to show us how much more difficult their lives were? Not exactly, this writing is about how college students of this generation make use of digital technology. The wide spread of today’s technology via computers or smartphones results in constant connectivity to the internet. Social media, video gaming, information databases, and online classes, have affected college students’ studies. As a result, more students are being distracted, making a wider academic gap with self-disciplined students.

Sherry Turkle, an M.I.T. professor described her views of the situation as, “ ‘We become smitten with the idea that there will be technological solutions to these knotty problems with education, but it happens over and over again that we stop talking to kids.’ That’s the root of what she calls ‘the crisis in the ability to talk.’ High-school teachers are already complaining, she said, that their students ‘are fixed on programs that give the right answer, and they’re losing the notion of talking and listening to each other, skills that middle school is supposed to teach.’ “ Allowing students to use these devices as a way to teach themselves conflicts what the school is supposed to do, which is teach the children. If these tablets are all we need to solve the education problem, why do we have school buildings and teachers? There is no interaction in the classroom when the devices are present, according the Turkle, and they don’t develop normal communication skills that are important for the workplace and everyday life. Use of technology in the classrooms also introduces issues beyond the classroom at home. Larry Rosen’s studies concluded that, “ ‘There’s also a concern,’ he said, ‘that technology tends to overstimulate your brain,’ disturbing sleep cycles and preventing the mind from going into what psychologists

Author, Eliana Dockterman in her article,¨The Digital Parent Trap¨, exposes the potential benefits of technology use among young people. Dockterman´s purpose is to directly inform us about how studying and learning from computers and hand hale gadgets can actually improve our education mentally. Us the younger generation who are being physically exposed to this more and more should benefit from these opportunities that are being given to us,¨Dockterman¨ stated in her article that using technology is the next step for teens to learn since this is what keeps us a focused. With this being said I conclude that gadgets are the future of learning since we have advanced this 21st century.

Mark Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University and the author of The Dumbest Generation, contends that perhaps social communication that students choose to invest in regularly (blogging, texting, and social networking) on their time, may hinder vocabulary growth and therefore play a role in the ability to communicate effectively in academic and workplace arenas. This is an argument that I’ve heard before, and although I understand the rational, I disagree with the claim, in general.

Today, the world is much different than it was fifteen years ago, much less fifty years ago. The progression of technology has been even more significant than ever before in the last several years, but has ultimately lead us astray from our core character. The production of cell phones, social media updates, websites, and technological tools is constant, but these new and improved technologies have left the world with very few longstanding advancements. Though the internet has brought the world innumerable innovative opportunities, life before technology was much more efficient, filled with many more promising benefits: responsibility, socialization skills, and controversy.

Technology is not only impeding lives every day, but altering our learning in schools as well! Whether or not technology hampers with the attention spans of students and the ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, and do computers, phone, and video games affect students' capability to focus? These technologies will affect how the world will grow as the future generations may falter as they struggled through schooling. Societies will become even less advanced. Technology is taking the world by storm, as it hinders people's personal and professional lives, it stops human connections, and the ability to learn and focus on more important matters in schooling along with others has been negatively affected.

We live in the era of technology, and we experience rapid technological progress. Many things around us have become automatic. Specifically, technology has become a part of many fields such as math, science, business and education. Also, kids in this generation are raised with smartphones, tablets, multimedia and many other technologies. Ramamuruthy and Rao (2015) describe students today with the term “digital native” because they are exposed to technology everyday (p.24). Since education plays a significant role in society, it needs to be developed in order to meet the demands of the 21st century. In other words, students need to be educated in a way that keeps up with their daily lives.