Is Technology Making Us Dumb?

Art by Chad White and Tracy Jackson | VOX Staff

By Chad White | VOX Staff

The relationship between many teens and technology has become very addictive. We rely on our iPods to keep up with the latest music, computers for social networking and TV to keep up with current trends. Our day-to-day lives are bombarded with innovations. “Psychologists have officially classified technology addiction as an impulse disorder that can be as socially devastating as alcoholism, gambling, sex and drug addiction,” according to writer Jennifer LeClaire in an article on technewsworld.com, a technology-related news site. Even though technology is a powerful tool that keeps us connected, I think our generation should learn to find balance in terms of how we use it.

Fascinated with Technology
Our overuse and dependency on technology has caused some adults, including 49-year-old author and Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein to label us “the dumbest generation.” On a Friday afternoon in mid-July, I interviewed Bauerlein over the phone about his controversial book, “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”

“The title is over the top and pretty harsh,” Bauerlein said, laughing. “The point is to spark discussion about what digital tools mean in young people’s lives. The title is a provocation challenging kids to address their own intellectuality, their knowledge and their skills.”

Bauerlein said he wrote the book for a number of reasons: “Maybe I just walked into too many libraries and found young people at every single computer, and when I went up to the book stacks, they were deserted,” he explained. “Or maybe it was when I said to a poetry class, today’s homework assignment is to go home and memorize 20 lines of verse and recite them to the class and a student asked, ‘Why?’ Or maybe it was just when I sat in the quad at Emory University, watching in between classes the number of students sauntering between the buildings — all of them with cell phones at their ears.”

For many of us, the impulse to join the latest fads is irresistible. As soon as a new gadget comes out, we rush to buy it to show off to our friends. We probably do this because we often feel the need to be accepted among our peers, and having the latest gadget definitely affects our social status.

Divided Attention
In class our attention is divided between our textbooks and texting. In some ways, texting ruins our spelling. If you’re a texter, you know what I’m talking about. These days we text almost everything in abbreviation: “ROFL” in place of “rolling on the floor laughing,” “ILY” for “I Love You,” “WTH” meaning “What the heck?” or “TTYL” instead of “Talk to you later.”

One day last school year, I was sitting in class when I noticed another student looking at his phone. He was on the Internet checking out the latest score for a basketball game, jeopardizing his learning for something he could have done during lunch. Obviously many of us who use the Internet or text in class really don’t understand how technology competes for our attention when we should be learning.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Bauerlein argues that our generation generally doesn’t read books, and many of us don’t want to, either. “It’s a new attitude, this brazen disregard of books and reading. Earlier generations resented homework assignments, of course, and only a small segment of each dove into the intellectual currents of the time, but no generation trumpeted illiteracy ... as a valid behavior of their peers,” Bauerlein wrote in The Boston Globe.

“It’s harder to assign a book over 200 pages. This is really a public problem—not just an academic problem,” Bauerlein said in the phone interview. He criticized our obsessive use of technology, pointing out that the bad thing digital tools have done is give our generation nonstop access to one another. “The Internet is a wonderful, wonderful instrument for knowledge and information, and yet, what you’ve done is take these tools and use them to learn about your own age group.” This continuous access to our peers isn’t necessarily bad, except that it causes us to miss out on the chance of interacting with and learning from adults.

“I couldn’t sit in my bed at midnight and get on the Internet to chat with six people all over the country. And that’s a good thing,” Bauerlein said. It was a good thing that my social exchanges were limited with my peers. I had to be around adults.”

It’s Not Our Fault
It’s not our fault that we are bombarded with technology. My parents got me my first cell phone when I was in the fifth grade. I was flooded with the amount of things I could do with it. Back then, I wasn’t as tech-savvy as I am now. I had to learn the mechanics of the phone, which wasn’t easy. By the time I mastered the functions, I was ready to move on to the next best technology.

However, I agree with Bauerlein that our growing dependence on technology can be handicapping because many of us have no limitations on how much time we spend on our gadgets. Internet addiction also sidetracks us from appreciating the beauty of nature and handicaps us from real interactions with people. Teens who waste time on social networking sites miss out on the benefits of talking to people face-to-face, so the personal connection gets lost in cyber space.

Today, many teens rely on technology to create or sustain a social life. Sixty-four percent of U.S. 15- to 17-year-olds have online profiles, according to the 2006 Pew Internet & American Life Project Teens and Parents survey. Bauerlein believes that our overuse of technology happens in big part because of peer pressure. “One of the most powerful forces in our society is a collective will of teenagers,” he said. “When Neilson Ratings counted the most popular Web sites for your generation, nine of the top 10 sites were for social networking. I think that for 15 year olds, digital tools are a window into adolescence.”

Teens are dependant on technology because it is easily accessible, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any positive aspects to these digital tools. Cell phones have given our parents and friends constant access to us. According to the Center on Media and Child Health, 60 percent of teens own cell phones. It’s a tool that’s especially useful in times of emergency. Our iPods allow us to listen to our favorite songs and watch our favorite movies wherever we are, whenever we want. The Internet connects us to people from different cultures who we might not get the chance to interact with in our communities.

Making Change
While Bauerlein acknowledges the positive aspects of technology, he said some of the things that are being affected because of technology include loss of “the kind of slow, deliberate concentration of information and certain habits of analysis and reflection.” Bauerlein also said the Internet has caused some students to wonder why they’d need to memorize a poem or the Gettysburg Address when they can find it online.

“The problem with that is that what you’re doing is making historical knowledge all external. The danger of the Internet is making knowledge so easily accessible that [students] think they don’t really have to know it, internalize it,” he said.

Bauerlein made it clear that our generation “is no less intelligent [than older generations] in terms of raw intelligence. Your generation has enormous advantages in terms of schools, libraries, museums, galleries and more money than any other generation before,” he explained.

“This is the dumbest generation because it’s solidifying its social barriers to the adult realities of history, civics and foreign affairs,” Bauerlein said. He also said characteristics of “smarter generations” include more historical knowledge, civic awareness and intellectual curiosity.

I think Bauerlein’s analysis of our generation is mostly true. To turn our generation into smarter people, we should balance our “tech-intellect” with old-school ways of learning. We shouldn’t let technology make us lose our heads.

Chad is a sophomore at Roswell High. He says he enjoys creating comics.