The Dumbest Generation (19 page)
Read The Dumbest Generation Online
Authors: Mark Bauerlein
Young Americans suffer the most from their endorsement, even as they adopt the vision and testify to the advantages of digital tools. Here one of the disabling tendencies of youth gains ground. The evaluators of digital-learning programs accept the enthusiasm of eighth-graders for computers in the classroom as a reliable indicator of academic benefit. Pro-technology voices in public life interpret the 18-year-old at a screen blogging and gaming, intensely interactive, as a revolutionary figure, a “Netizen” wielding what Will Richardson terms “new disruptive technologies that are transforming the world.” Their judgment flatters the juniors, doing what admirers of youth have done ever since Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Wordsworth wrote their paeans more than two centuries ago: ennobling the diversions of youth. While the rhetoric of pro-technology voices soars, however, the reality of adolescent Web practices—the nine out of ten postings and game sessions and messages—is just what we should expect, the adolescent expressions and adolescent recreations of adolescents.
Indeed, the contrast between hype and reality would be comical were it not for the severe costs. In his national tour of digital schools, Todd Oppenheimer recounts one ludicrous mismatch after another. Visiting a high school in Maryland “whose budget for technology is so lavish that it has earned the school fame for being one of the most wired in the nation,” he wanders through a classroom with a teacher and sees the students entering data into spreadsheets. But when he passes through by himself he spies the same students on the Dallas Cowboys Web site, joining a news exchange on favorite sodas, and checking out Netscape headlines.
Here is Emily Nussbaum profiling a teen blogger in the
New York Times Magazine:
“When M. gets home from school, he immediately logs on to his computer. Then he stays there, touching base with the people he has seen all day long, floating in a kind of multitasking heaven of communication.” All evening long M. checks his blog for responses from readers, then composes “wry, supportive commentary to their observations” and “koanlike observations on life.” Another teen blogger Nussbaum profiles is J., a high schooler in Westchester County, New York. “In his online outpourings,” Nussbaum applauds, “J. inveighed hilariously against his parents, his teachers and friends who had let him down.” But read her specimen of J.’s blogger wit: " ’Hey everyone ever,’ he wrote in one entry, ‘stop making fun of people. It really is a sucky thing to do, especially if you hate being made fun of yourself. . . . This has been a public service announcement. You may now resume your stupid hypocritical, lying lives.’ ”
New York Times Magazine:
“When M. gets home from school, he immediately logs on to his computer. Then he stays there, touching base with the people he has seen all day long, floating in a kind of multitasking heaven of communication.” All evening long M. checks his blog for responses from readers, then composes “wry, supportive commentary to their observations” and “koanlike observations on life.” Another teen blogger Nussbaum profiles is J., a high schooler in Westchester County, New York. “In his online outpourings,” Nussbaum applauds, “J. inveighed hilariously against his parents, his teachers and friends who had let him down.” But read her specimen of J.’s blogger wit: " ’Hey everyone ever,’ he wrote in one entry, ‘stop making fun of people. It really is a sucky thing to do, especially if you hate being made fun of yourself. . . . This has been a public service announcement. You may now resume your stupid hypocritical, lying lives.’ ”
To praise such postures as “wry” and “hilarious,” and to overlook the puerile sentiments, is to reinforce the simultaneously self-negating and self-aggrandizing adolescent bearings. A more circumspect glance finds that bad grammar, teen colloquialisms, and shallow ironies litter the blogs, comment threads, and social networking sites, raising the vocabulary problem cited earlier. Just as weak-vocabulary encounters don’t inculcate stronger reading-comprehension skills, so weak-vocabulary writing doesn’t yield better composition skills. Teen blog writing sticks to the lingo of teens—simple syntax, phonetic spelling, low diction—and actually grooves bad habits. Nevertheless, instead of telling J. and other teens heavy into Web 2.0 to pull away from the screen and devote a few more hours to algebra, chemistry, and French, Nussbaum and other adult observers marvel at the depth and pace of their immersion. They give adolescents just what they want, a rationale for closing their books, hanging out online, and jockeying with one another. Teenagers don’t want to spend Tuesday night on science tasks or
1984.
With the screen luring them all the time with the prospect of a new contact in the last hour, the payoff for homework looks too distant, the effort too dull. AOL is more honest about the contrast. Among the options on its teen page () sits “Look at Pretty Pictures,” a file of celebrity photos whose main attraction appears in the subtitle: “Because it’s better than homework.”
1984.
With the screen luring them all the time with the prospect of a new contact in the last hour, the payoff for homework looks too distant, the effort too dull. AOL is more honest about the contrast. Among the options on its teen page () sits “Look at Pretty Pictures,” a file of celebrity photos whose main attraction appears in the subtitle: “Because it’s better than homework.”
THE ENHANCED CONNECTIVITY, and the indulgence of teachers and journalists, feed yet another adolescent vice that technophiles never mention: peer absorption. Educators speak about the importance of role models and the career pressures facing kids, but in truth, adolescents care a lot more about what other adolescents think than what their elders think. Their egos are fragile, their beliefs in transition, their values uncertain. They inhabit a rigorous world of consumerism and conformity, of rebellious poses and withering group judgments. Boys struggle to acquire the courage and strength of manhood, girls the poise and strength of womanhood. They tease one another mercilessly, and a rejection can crush them. Life is a pinball game of polarized demands—a part-time job that requires punctuality and diligence, pals who urge them to cut up in class; a midterm forcing them to stay home and study, a friend who wants to catch a horror flick. For many of them, good standing with classmates is the only way to secure a safe identity, and so they spend hours on the channels of adolescent fare searching out the latest in clothes, slang, music, sports, celebrities, school gossip, and one another. Technology has made it fabulously easier.
And so, apart from all the other consequences of digital breakthroughs, for the younger users a profound social effect has settled in. Teens and young adults now have more contact with one another than ever before. Cliques used to form in the schoolyard or on the bus, and when students came home they communicated with one another only through a land line restricted by their parents. Social life pretty much stopped at the front door. With the latest gadgets in their own rooms and in the libraries, however, peer-to-peer contact never ends. Email and Instant Messaging maintain high school friendships long after graduation. Social networking sites produce virtual buddies who’ve never met in person and live 3,000 miles apart, but who converse intimately from one bedroom to another. School secrets and bullying get amplified on a saucy sophomore’s blog, and two dozen others chime in. As soon as one class ends, undergraduates scurry across the quad for their next class but still take time to check cell phones for messages. Twitter technology (debuting in March 2006) enables users to send short updates on the spur of the moment through mobile phones and pocket PCs to others’ devices, or to a profile page that forwards the message to every registered friend slated to receive them. The “tweets” can go out every few minutes and be as mundane as “Well, I’m still stuck in traffic,” the rationale, according to
,
stemming from one simple query: “What are you doing?” That is the genuine significance of the Web to a 17-year-old mind, not the universe of knowledge brought to their fingertips, but an instrument of nonstop peer contact.
,
stemming from one simple query: “What are you doing?” That is the genuine significance of the Web to a 17-year-old mind, not the universe of knowledge brought to their fingertips, but an instrument of nonstop peer contact.
Votaries of screen media and the Web start from the truism that the Web delivers a phenomenal body of data, stories, facts, images, and exercises. A column by education writer Joel Turtel advises “Let’s Google and Yahoo Our Kids’ Education” for that very reason. While in-class exercises drown students in overscheduled drudgery, he argues, search engines permit his daughter to “explore any subject” and put “the whole world at her fingertips.” Studying is joyful and economical. “She can learn about tulips, cooking, dinosaurs, fashion, arithmetic, model airplanes, how to play the piano, or story books by thousands of authors,” Turtel enthuses. “When she is older, she can search dozens of Internet libraries, including the Library of Congress, for information on any subject under the sun.”
He’s right, it’s all there, the great books, masterpieces, old maps, encyclopedia entries, world newspapers, science facts, and historical events. But that’s not where the kids go. Caesar conquered Gaul, Cleopatra seduced him, and Antony took his place after the assassination, but young Americans prefer to learn about one another. In Nielsen//NetRatings for October 2006, nine of the top ten sites for 12- to 17-year-olds offered content or support tools for social networking. Chief Nielsen analyst Ken Cassar noted with surprise “the extent to which a wide array of supporting Web sites has developed in conjunction with these bigger, more well-known Web destinations. MySpace and YouTube have spawned a vibrant online ecosystem. ” The National School Boards report “Creating and Connecting” opens, “Online social networking is now so deeply embedded in the lifestyles of tweens and teens that it rivals television for their attention. ” It counted nine hours a week of networking time. For college students, the numbers are no better. In 2002, Pew Research issued a “data memo” on Web sites and college kids. It found: “Seven of the top 20 Web sites focus on apparel, four focus on movies and event tickets, and three are music related. Other popular sites focus on posters and artwork, video games and consumer electronics” (“College Students and the Web”). In early 2006, when Northwestern University communications professor Esther Hargittai polled 1,300 students at University of Illinois-Chicago on their online time and favorite destinations, their choices were all too predictable. At number one stood
Facebook
(78.1 percent), followed by
MySpace
(50.7 percent). Only 5 percent regularly checked a blog or forum on politics, economic, law, or policy. Only 1 percent had ever perused the leading left-wing blog
.
(78.1 percent), followed by
MySpace
(50.7 percent). Only 5 percent regularly checked a blog or forum on politics, economic, law, or policy. Only 1 percent had ever perused the leading left-wing blog
.
The acclaimed empowerment that Web 2.0 has fostered goes almost entirely toward social stuff. Teens and young adults like email and Instant Messaging and pornography, not (Smithsonian Institution). The Web offers wondrous information and images, but why would a high school senior download them when he can read what his classmates say about what happened over the weekend? People can watch shows from the PBS series
NOVA
online or find on
YouTube
a clip of Thelonious Monk playing “Blue Monk” while Count Basie grins in front of the piano, but those clips pale before the thrill of composing something about yourself, posting it online, having someone, somewhere, read it and write something back. That’s the pull of immaturity, and technology has granted young Americans ever more opportunities to go with it, not outgrow it. Back in 2001, Pew Research issued a report titled “Teenage Life Online,” and almost the entire document focused on social matters, friendships, and messaging. The word
knowledge
appeared only once in the entire 46 pages, when it mentioned that one-quarter of teens use the Internet to “get information about things that are hard to talk to other people about.” Instead of opening adolescents and young adults to worldly realities, acquainting them with the global village, inducting them into the course of civilization, or at least the Knowledge Economy, digital communications have opened them to one another—which is to say, have enclosed them in a parochial cosmos of youth matters and concerns.
NOVA
online or find on
YouTube
a clip of Thelonious Monk playing “Blue Monk” while Count Basie grins in front of the piano, but those clips pale before the thrill of composing something about yourself, posting it online, having someone, somewhere, read it and write something back. That’s the pull of immaturity, and technology has granted young Americans ever more opportunities to go with it, not outgrow it. Back in 2001, Pew Research issued a report titled “Teenage Life Online,” and almost the entire document focused on social matters, friendships, and messaging. The word
knowledge
appeared only once in the entire 46 pages, when it mentioned that one-quarter of teens use the Internet to “get information about things that are hard to talk to other people about.” Instead of opening adolescents and young adults to worldly realities, acquainting them with the global village, inducting them into the course of civilization, or at least the Knowledge Economy, digital communications have opened them to one another—which is to say, have enclosed them in a parochial cosmos of youth matters and concerns.
Maturity comes, in part, through vertical modeling, relations with older people such as teachers, employers, ministers, aunts and uncles, and older siblings, along with parents, who impart adult outlooks and interests. In their example, they reveal the minor meaning of adolescent worries, showing that the authentic stakes of life surpass the feats and letdowns of high school and college. The Web (along with cell phones, teen sitcoms, and pop music), though, encourages more horizontal modeling, more raillery and mimicry of people the same age, an intensification of peer consciousness. It provides new and enhanced ways for adolescents to do what they’ve always done in a prosperous time: talk to, act like, think like, compete against, and play with one another. Social life is a powerful temptation, and most teenagers feel the pain of missing out—not invited to the party, not having the right clothes, not making the sports team, not having a date for the dance. Digital technology is both a way into it and a way out. It keeps popular teens in the know and in the clique, providing connections that stabilize their popularity—midnight phone calls to exchange gossip, message boards to announce impromptu gatherings, news feeds on the reigning youth icons, etc. And it gives unpopular teens an outlet and an audience, for instance, the nerd who opens a blog and gripes nightly on the day’s displeasures, the reclusive gamer who joins chat rooms on his favorite games, the shy sophomore hoping an understanding voice responds to her profile, etc.
In both cases, the absorption in local youth society grows, and adolescence appears ever more autonomous. For all of them, popular youths and marginal ones, the celebrated customization power of digital technology is disabling. Ordinary 18-year-olds love digital technology because it allows them to construct a reflexive surrounding. The part-time job tires them and the classroom irks them to death, but the blogs, games, shows, videos, music, messages, updates, phone calls . . . they mirror their woes and fantasies. It’s a prepackaged representation of the world, a “Daily Me,” a rendition of things filtered by the dispositions of young users. All of them groove the input, and the screen becomes not a vein of truth but a mirror of desire. Google News sends daily links to stories on topics of their choice. RSS feeds keep them abreast of favorite Web sites, and only those sites. Edgy blogs anchor their outlook, and they never hear a dissenting word. Mark Zuckerberg reveals to the
Wall Street Journal
the secret of the site he founded,
Facebook:
“That’s kind of what we are doing here, but with ‘What’s going on in the world with these people that I care about’ ” (see Kessler). The things that bother and bore them are blocked out. The people they don’t know and don’t want to know they don’t have to meet. A coup may have erupted in Central America, a transportation bill passed the House, a food scare just started, but if they don’t care about them they don’t have to hear about them. Reality is personalized, and the world outside steadily tallies the ego inside. A 16-year-old panelist at the 2006 Online News Association convention summed it up perfectly. When a journalist in the audience asked if sticking solely to RSS feeds made her miss the “broader picture,” she snapped, “I’m not trying to get a broader picture. I’m trying to get what I want.” For most adolescents that means the horizon ends with their friends, music, TV shows, games, and virtual contacts. The adult realities of history, politics, high art, and finance can wait.
Wall Street Journal
the secret of the site he founded,
Facebook:
“That’s kind of what we are doing here, but with ‘What’s going on in the world with these people that I care about’ ” (see Kessler). The things that bother and bore them are blocked out. The people they don’t know and don’t want to know they don’t have to meet. A coup may have erupted in Central America, a transportation bill passed the House, a food scare just started, but if they don’t care about them they don’t have to hear about them. Reality is personalized, and the world outside steadily tallies the ego inside. A 16-year-old panelist at the 2006 Online News Association convention summed it up perfectly. When a journalist in the audience asked if sticking solely to RSS feeds made her miss the “broader picture,” she snapped, “I’m not trying to get a broader picture. I’m trying to get what I want.” For most adolescents that means the horizon ends with their friends, music, TV shows, games, and virtual contacts. The adult realities of history, politics, high art, and finance can wait.
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