We‘ve all heard an older family member at some get-together telling us about how stupid and ungrateful our generation is and how, in his day, everything was much better. But imagine if he sat down and wrote a book about it.
Mark Bauerlein, an English professor turned author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30),” claims young people are so attached to the Internet and texting that technology is making them stupider.
We can’t argue with Bauerlein’s assertion that a change is occurring. But the world changes, and we come out on the other side better for it. Is our generation dependent on the Internet? Yes. But does that mean we scratch our heads at the printed page or dissolve into chaos when hurricanes knock out our power? Although we are so interested in ourselves that we constantly post for the world to see, we can’t be any more selfish than the group that was dubbed Generation Me. While we find surfing the Internet for our information faster and easier, we aren’t shying away from higher education or reading for pleasure.
Bauerlein may see us as a dull-minded mass shifting from place to place as we attempt to stay forever plugged in, but we see individuals affected differently by the world and its changes. The Internet opens minds rather than closing them and helps us learn about things that might otherwise have been out of physical reach. And we’re not afraid that we’ll drop the written word or the way we’ve preserved it since the ancient Egyptians started scrawling on papyrus.
Bauerlein may see us as a mass of young people sans identity and individuality. But we’re people who, like Bauerlein probably was at our age, are tired of being told how much better things were before we came along.
