Sure, snowflakes are disengaged. Sure, they're lazy. Sure, they're navel gazers. But do you ever get the ultra-creepy feeling they're literally brain damaged?
In The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein argues that technology is making young people right stupid. Multi-tasking is a myth; culturally-induced ADHD is the reality. See also The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Is the digital wonderverse not just a distraction but a destroyer of developing cerebral grooves?
I see my students wander in and out of class mid-session like dazed concussion victims. Little sense of a public/private distinction exists for them. Facebook has taught them well: The world is their toilet. Their passive-aggressive resistance to saying anything at all in class (aside from rude side conversations) approaches clinical psychopathy. With glazed and hollow eyes, addled dildos fiddle with cell phones and play online games only inches away from me as I speak about Matters of Great Importance. Without fear. Without fear, and without shame. The vacantness of their visages. A little hard for me to maintain my scholarly gravitas. I'm not a real person in a room with other real persons trying to accomplish a worthy goal; I'm just a talking egghead on a media environment dialog screen they wish they could minimize. Or: They do minimize me by pretending I'm not there. Their warped perceptual systems eliminate anything other than the "I."
It's starting to make my skin crawl.
In The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein argues that technology is making young people right stupid. Multi-tasking is a myth; culturally-induced ADHD is the reality. See also The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Is the digital wonderverse not just a distraction but a destroyer of developing cerebral grooves?
I see my students wander in and out of class mid-session like dazed concussion victims. Little sense of a public/private distinction exists for them. Facebook has taught them well: The world is their toilet. Their passive-aggressive resistance to saying anything at all in class (aside from rude side conversations) approaches clinical psychopathy. With glazed and hollow eyes, addled dildos fiddle with cell phones and play online games only inches away from me as I speak about Matters of Great Importance. Without fear. Without fear, and without shame. The vacantness of their visages. A little hard for me to maintain my scholarly gravitas. I'm not a real person in a room with other real persons trying to accomplish a worthy goal; I'm just a talking egghead on a media environment dialog screen they wish they could minimize. Or: They do minimize me by pretending I'm not there. Their warped perceptual systems eliminate anything other than the "I."
It's starting to make my skin crawl.
Then say to yourself:
ReplyDeleteI must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obilteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit to to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will only be nothing.
Only I will remain.
- Frank Herbert
Straight, no chaser: Bauerlein and Carr are correct. And my skin is beginning to crawl as well.
ReplyDeletewtevrrrr
ReplyDeleteI sort of feel that college just means so little to them that they act that way when they're with us.
ReplyDeleteI'm old enough to remember when college seemed like a grand accomplishment. It was "Are you going to college?" and not "Where are you going to college?"
My worst students don't respect the notion of college, so don't respect me or my classroom either. Nothing personal, I don't think. They just don't see it as anything other than a continuation of high school - which they also hated.
I worry about brain damage on the other end. I am constantly ripping iPhones out of my 4-year-old's hands -- why do adults think this is an OK way to entertain a preschooler? I limit TV to one hour of PBS a day (too much, I think, but I'm on my own in the AM and she gets up early). And I forbid movies, cell phone usage, and computer time. But it seems like a losing battle, and when I look at my dazed and addled students, I fear for my kid's future, because at some point you lose control and your kid enters the culture they live in. Shudder.
ReplyDeleteThe bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma. The master's degree is the new college diploma.....
ReplyDeleteMarcia - it's a constant struggle. But I think the habits you give kids when they're young do help. I also limit screen time. (For my kids. I'm attached 24/7 to the Interwebs Umbilical myself ...) They will enter the culture eventually but at least they will have seen a book or two and a few trees before they got there.
ReplyDeleteI think Merely Academic is right about forming habits. I had severely limited TV time as a preschooler/early gradeschooler (all of Mr. Rogers and 1/2 of Sesame Street, to make up a full hour; the portable TV lived in a closet and only came out for these occasions, which didn't happen every day). Although I've gone through times in my life when I watched a good deal of TV (but also made a good deal of use of the VCR, since I don't like the idea that someone else sets my schedule), I also lived quite happily without one throughout college, and currently don't have one that actually receives a signal(no cable, and no device that can receive the current TV signals; one of these days I'll either buy a digital tuner or a new TV, but it just doesn't seem urgent). Of course I'm addicted to NPR (and this place), but that's another story. The good (and bad) news is that our brains remain more plastic than used to be thought; that means that while early habits do matter, later ones play a role, too.
ReplyDeleteEverybody of every age ought to unplug for significant blocks of time every week, and for several consecutive days at least once a year, I think. If doing that results in withdrawal symptoms, then it needs to happen more frequently.
Cassandra, were you raised in my household and I never noticed? My mom TOTALLY kept the portable TV in a closet. And whatever my flaws, I can focus like a mo-fo.
ReplyDeleteThis is what i feel like when on campus...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv-fbO-_xl0
ReplyDelete