The Dumbest Generation

Internet has become an indispensable tool in my daily tasks. Contrary; when I was a child, I recall myself going to the library for investigations as back then the use of internet was still on the road of gaining popularity. Nowadays, internet seems to have gained tremendous popularity among new generations to the point that if I were to compare my generation with future generations, I would say they will have even more advantages than the ones I had when I was a child. In addition, changes in population is a second normative history-grade influence as my generation tends to have less children than past generations due to the implementation of contraceptive methods and living cost increases experienced since the past few

Mark Bauerlein seems to believe that is the dumbest generation because research has shown that knowledge skills and intellectual habits have gone down, and although some people agree with him, others don’t. I believe this generation isn’t the dumbest because there are other things that need to be considered when calling someone, a group of people, or even an entire generation stupid or dumb, rather than just knowledge skills and intellectual habits.

“We are gradually changing from a nation of calloused hands to a nation of agile brains.” – Marcel Just. (Begley 92) This quote really speaks to me. I find it to be very true as we are focusing more on developing new technology to do the work we might be doing with our hands. It is similar to the common expression “Work Smarter not Harder”. I think that this is what the internet is letting us do. However many authors and writers do not think this is the case. They believe that the internet is making us less intelligent as it is rewiring our brain to think in order of internet articles rather than books. I on the contrary believe the internet is giving us an easy opportunity to learn which is therefore making us more intelligent.

The main evidence that Bauerlein gives us to support his theory is statistics that are found in a survey that show the falling reading rates for people of all ages in the last 30 years. The most popular survey was held by the National Endowment of the Arts Association entitled Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

Every generation is different, and the information that is commonly learned in each generation is affected by the events surrounding that time period. As stated in The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb article written by Sharon Begley, the reason why people cared more about politics in 1966 than now was because “politics determined whether or not you were going to get drafted and shipped to Vietnam”. Today, teenagers do not care as much about politics because, although it is

In a 2014 article on Psychologytoday.com, Ray Williams informs his audience about the rise of anti-intellectualism in American in an article called: Anti-Intellectualism and the “Dumbing Down” of America. Williams clams that America has suffered in intellectualism because society has dismissed science, the arts, and humanities and have been replaced by media, entertainment, and ignorance. He backs up this claim by citing Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, Pulitzer price winner Richard Hofstadter, author of The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein, a number of studies and statistics done across the country, and as well as many other authors on this subject. Williams makes bold claims by comparing American education to Japanese,

Americans today look back and realize how much technology has advanced. The big question is whether this technology is affecting our way of thinking. Or like some authors politicians and older generations say “ dumb.” So why is it that we are considered the dumbest generation, won’t we just grow up and call the next generation dumb? Older generations (over 30) believe that people under 30 are the dumbest generation, but if you think about it that’s what each generation has said about the previous, making it a pointless and incorrect statement said by the elderly.

Additionally to television, many political figures including Barrack Obama use social networking as a way to reach American citizens. Social networking is practically a right of passage among youth today. Political influences are in all types of media. Any young person that uses social networking or watches television is choosing to not pay attention to politics. “It would be reading too much into such responses to say that these two-thirds of young Americans didn’t value voting; they could well have seen voting as a fundamental right or a crucial choice. Nevertheless, without a

Millenials is the name given to the generation who reached adulthood around the turn of the 21st century, they were born during 1975 and 1995 which was the Cold War era. The millennial is given the nickname as the television or digital age. The popularity of television boomed in their time was a result of the Space Race and America's curiosity of what would have been called the impossible. In the 1940's there was only a few tv's but in the-the 1970's the amount of tv's surged to four million plus. The Millenials grew up in a society when the social norm was for an individual to watch tv five hours a day. The United States victory was largely contributed to great communication technology. An example was in the Civil War when President Lincoln would command the military thousands of miles away. What strengthened the Millenial ideology is communication and getting full

Is technology helping or hurting society? Is society smarter or slowly getting dumber as the digital age gets better and stronger? Two authors in the Coyote Reader touch on this subject and argue the different advantages and disadvantages that the digital age has on society. Ultimately, the answer comes down to perception. Technology is not necessarily making society dumber, it is just changing how the brain works.

At the young age of nineteen the importance of choosing a president or the significance of it had not occurred to most college age people. Parties, school, work—all are of most importance to young college age student’s lives. Living in the present is the way they feel it has to be. When looking into their future they see inevitable student debt forcing these college students into further stress, leaving no time to think of anyone or anything but their own future. Though they look into their future career goals and ways to manage money, the thought of their American president is far from their minds. Most college age voters do not see the importance of choosing a president. These millennials deem that voting for the future president does

You express how much you value connections as much as much as you express your other values, and you, dear reader, are likely to esteem certain types of personal connections over others. In The Dumbest Generation by Matt Baulerlein, he expresses how this exact trait could be the downfall of an entire young generation because teenagers are connecting too strongly to their technology. In Echo and Narcissus, Narcissus' fatal flaw is desiring a relationship with no one but himself, and obsessing over his own vanity. I believe that while these sources express their concerns for becoming obsessed with vanity, or technology, we must keep balance among every type of connection in order to be content and active in the world.

Many people nowadays rely very much on technology. Those under the age of thirty are indeed “the dumbest generation”. These people are the dumbest because they were born into the new media world. There is three sources that enhance that the age we now live in, is ignorant however, there is also one source that says so otherwise. The sources are a combination of a excerpts, an article, and a political cartoon.

To begin with, kids this generation have social media to use as a source of information. In the text it states, “ social media has allowed the spread of information at a rate that has never been seen before,”( “is this generation really more informed?”, Paragraph 1). For example, the rise of the black lives matter movement spread throughout due to social media. This topic interest many people, which made them want to know more about. Also, having social media allows people to become more informed if they choose to use it that way.In addition, it states, “... 88 percent of Millennials use

Why do Americans have limited amount of political knowledge? It’s because the public lacks interest in politics. They rely on group/party loyalty, rather than reasoning. Their responses change randomly from survey to survey. Recent research shows that the public knows some basic things. For example, they know the location of the capital and the length of president’s term, but they lack knowledge about other basic things. About 50% know there are 2 senators for each state, and only 66% know which party controls the House. They show high instability of their preferences, so explosion of information sources has not helped. The authors Greenburg and Page believe that political “trivia” may not be a good measure of adequate knowledge. They also mentioned that the reason for the instability of preference is because people change their minds and reflect on multidimensional ideology. It’s understandable that American citizens have lost trust in the government as well as interest, but the group of people that show the least amount of interest in politics and voting are the young generation.