The Dumbest Generation (22 page)
Read The Dumbest Generation Online
Authors: Mark Bauerlein
That’s the momentum of screen reading, especially so with younger users, and it has an objective counterpart in virtual spheres. The Web evolves through usage, and traffic volume steers the evolution. If that’s how users behave, the Web responds. When AOL posted a Q&A page on its Red service for teens, it crafted a pertinent title: “Truth or Crap.” A standard heading such as “True or False” wouldn’t appeal to the target audience, explained Malcolm Bird, vice president of AOL’s youth area. “You have to speak to them in relevant terms,” he told the
Wall Street Journal
in 2005 (see Zaslow), relevance including the prevailing verbal conventions. And so, a few idioms dominate. One of them is the teen lingo of social networking sites, teen blogs, and IM exchanges. Go to
MySpace,
click on “browse,” click on any photo, and the amateur glamour shots and trifling chitchat unfurl. On one of them I just picked at random the comment sequence runs: “what up chik how you been mine was allright holla at me some time,” “Hey girlie! Just stopping by to show some luv,” “HA! I popped your comment cherry!! I love you baby :).”
Wall Street Journal
in 2005 (see Zaslow), relevance including the prevailing verbal conventions. And so, a few idioms dominate. One of them is the teen lingo of social networking sites, teen blogs, and IM exchanges. Go to
MySpace,
click on “browse,” click on any photo, and the amateur glamour shots and trifling chitchat unfurl. On one of them I just picked at random the comment sequence runs: “what up chik how you been mine was allright holla at me some time,” “Hey girlie! Just stopping by to show some luv,” “HA! I popped your comment cherry!! I love you baby :).”
Another idiom is the flat, featureless, factual style of
Wikipedia
entries. The site incorporates the brains of thousands, and one might assume that so many contributors and editors would create a heterogeneous repository of learning, the style changing as much as the information from page to page. In fact, though, read a few
Wikipedia
entries and the pat verbal formula stands out, the prose drained of almost every distinguishing trait. It’s a wonderful resource for a quick fact or figure, but use it more extensively and after a while the entries all sound the same. Note, for example, the sentences on George Washington’s presidency: “Although he never officially joined the Federalist Party, he supported its programs and was its inspirational leader. By refusing to pursue a third term, he made it the enduring norm that no U.S. President should seek more than two. Washington’s Farewell Address was a primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against involvement in foreign wars.” The information suffices, but it rolls off the screen in flinty tones, the phrases sounding like cue cards flipped one by one. And yet
Wikipedia
stands as the prime academic reference for students. Its popularity has a corollary effect:
Wikipedia
prose sets the standard for intellectual style. Students relying on
Wikipedia
alone, year in and year out, absorb the prose as proper knowledge discourse, and knowledge itself seems blank and uninspiring.
Wikipedia
entries. The site incorporates the brains of thousands, and one might assume that so many contributors and editors would create a heterogeneous repository of learning, the style changing as much as the information from page to page. In fact, though, read a few
Wikipedia
entries and the pat verbal formula stands out, the prose drained of almost every distinguishing trait. It’s a wonderful resource for a quick fact or figure, but use it more extensively and after a while the entries all sound the same. Note, for example, the sentences on George Washington’s presidency: “Although he never officially joined the Federalist Party, he supported its programs and was its inspirational leader. By refusing to pursue a third term, he made it the enduring norm that no U.S. President should seek more than two. Washington’s Farewell Address was a primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against involvement in foreign wars.” The information suffices, but it rolls off the screen in flinty tones, the phrases sounding like cue cards flipped one by one. And yet
Wikipedia
stands as the prime academic reference for students. Its popularity has a corollary effect:
Wikipedia
prose sets the standard for intellectual style. Students relying on
Wikipedia
alone, year in and year out, absorb the prose as proper knowledge discourse, and knowledge itself seems blank and uninspiring.
We have a plus and minus effect. The language of popular knowledge sites conveys helpful information, but it is too dull to break the grip of adolescent speech on the young mind. Knowledge-language and social-language stand apart, far apart, and young users throw all their energy to the latter. Now and then the Web helps youth knowledge grow, to be sure.
Facebook
founder Mark Zuckerberg explains to the
Wall Street Journal
how the network rescued him once in an art history class. “For the final exam, we had to learn the historical significance of something like 500 pieces of art from that period,” he recalls. “Having not really read that stuff, I was in a lot of trouble, spending my time building Facebook instead of studying.” Zuckerberg’s diction suggests why he would struggle in a humanities class, but in this case his initiative carried through. He downloaded images of all the artworks, posted them on the site with a comment box, then forwarded it to every other student in the class. The ensuing feedback kept him working for hours, and he ended up acing the class. But let’s be clear about the players—an ingenious young entrepreneur communicating with fellow Harvard undergrads, the best of the best, a minuscule elite. For 99 percent of the rest of their age group,
Facebook
and other social networking sites have no knowledge aims at all. Sites are for socializing, and they harden adolescent styles and thoughts, amplifying the discourse of lunchroom and keg party, not spreading the works of the Old Masters.
founder Mark Zuckerberg explains to the
Wall Street Journal
how the network rescued him once in an art history class. “For the final exam, we had to learn the historical significance of something like 500 pieces of art from that period,” he recalls. “Having not really read that stuff, I was in a lot of trouble, spending my time building Facebook instead of studying.” Zuckerberg’s diction suggests why he would struggle in a humanities class, but in this case his initiative carried through. He downloaded images of all the artworks, posted them on the site with a comment box, then forwarded it to every other student in the class. The ensuing feedback kept him working for hours, and he ended up acing the class. But let’s be clear about the players—an ingenious young entrepreneur communicating with fellow Harvard undergrads, the best of the best, a minuscule elite. For 99 percent of the rest of their age group,
and other social networking sites have no knowledge aims at all. Sites are for socializing, and they harden adolescent styles and thoughts, amplifying the discourse of lunchroom and keg party, not spreading the works of the Old Masters.
I see the results every semester, and in my own classes I often ask students to conduct an experiment in their daily lives. The next time you sit down to dinner with three friends, I tell them, try something unusual. In the midst of conversation, toss in a big word, a thesaurus word, casually as you sip your Coke. Instead of grumbling, “Yeah, so-and -so is really a jerk,” say, “Ah, what a truculent boor.” Don’t utter
nice,
say
congenial;
not
cheap,
but
pecuniary;
not
hard,
but
arduous;
not
strong,
but
ardent
or
fervent
or
Herculean.
When I rattle off the higher words, they laugh not just at the words alone, but at what they foresee will happen, too. “If I talk like that to my friends,” one student joshed the other day, “I won’t have any friends.”
nice,
say
congenial;
not
cheap,
but
pecuniary;
not
hard,
but
arduous;
not
strong,
but
ardent
or
fervent
or
Herculean.
When I rattle off the higher words, they laugh not just at the words alone, but at what they foresee will happen, too. “If I talk like that to my friends,” one student joshed the other day, “I won’t have any friends.”
If he’s right, it demonstrates that the social settings of adolescence actually conspire against verbal maturity. Peer pressure and peer judgment discourage wit, word play, and eloquence, and what impresses others in a job interview, a cocktail party, or an office meeting only alienates their buddies. The occasional high-toned term and periodic sentence that mark one as intelligent and thoughtful in adult situations mark one as pretentious and weird in adolescent situations. The verbal values of adulthood and adolescence clash, and to enter adult conditions, individuals must leave the verbal mores of high school behind.
The screen blocks the ascent. Given the online habits of young users, the popular sites and prevailing reading patterns, digital technology caters to youthfulness and haste. If Nielsen is right, more sites will adjust to their lesser literacies and leaping eyes, and sites that proffer elevated terms and elegant sentences will serve micro-niche audiences or disappear altogether. Sites want to maximize visitors, to become bookmarks, to convert every online traveler passing by into a daily reader, customer, member, subscriber, commenter. Learned content and eloquent style are not the way to attract them. The proliferation and competition of .com pages yield paradoxical effects that we’ve seen already—not more variety, but more homogeneity, not a race for quality, but a slide to the least common denominator. This doesn’t rule out digital learning, to be sure, but it does indicate that as young people extend their leisure pursuits online, diving into peer society and grooving scan habits, screen time turns anti-intellectual. Going online habituates them to juvenile mental work-outs. Can we expect them to shift cognitive gears whenever an educational page appears on the screen? With diversionary hours online far exceeding edifying hours, when digital learning moments arise, we may assume that students bring all their diversionary tics and expectations along with them.
YOUNG PEOPLE have too much choice, too much discretion for educators and mentors to guide their usage. By the time they enter classrooms outfitted for e-learning, they’ve passed too many hours doing their own e-thing, grooving non-learning routines too firmly. And once again, in Nielsen’s consumer logic, the trend will only increase. Fast scanning breeds faster scanning, and more scannable online prose. Social networking promotes more social networking and more personal profile pages. Adolescents are imitative creatures, and digital technology makes their models come almost entirely from their own ranks. Techno-enthusiasts extol Web 2.0 for precisely its individualist empowerment, the freedom of citizens to roam in a populous virtual universe, to follow pathways into museums, theaters, and performance spaces, to map and view faraway places, to write back to reporters and politicians, and so on. But liberated teenagers don’t follow the group blog
History News Network,
or download the essays on
Arts & Letters Daily,
or view masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They visit the amusement parks of youth expression, and if one site disappoints them, they have countless others to discover.
History News Network,
or download the essays on
Arts & Letters Daily,
or view masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They visit the amusement parks of youth expression, and if one site disappoints them, they have countless others to discover.
In a word, the gain in consumer choice and talkback capacity brings a parallel loss. Digital technology provides so many new and efficient ways to communicate, enables so much personalization and customization, that almost all the material encountered depends on the preferences of the users. The vendors of Web content have to anticipate consumer interests like never before, and their traditional duty to inform as well as delight has collapsed. Thirty years ago, granted a place on the airwaves, each purveyor assumed a responsibility to entertain and to instruct, to offer an
ABC News
along with
Charlie’s Angels, 60 Minutes
with
One Day at a Time.
In pre-cable, pre-Internet times, competition was limited, and viewers sometimes watched programs that didn’t jibe with their likings. The mismatch could be frustrating, but it occasionally served an edifying purpose: forcing people to recognize other peoples, different tastes, distant knowledge . . . if they wanted to tune in at all. Yes, the concentration of media in a few hands sometimes engendered a cultural arrogance among the producers and an ideological narrowness in the programming. But it also introduced young minds to what they might have missed if they had obeyed only their own dispositions.
ABC News
along with
Charlie’s Angels, 60 Minutes
with
One Day at a Time.
In pre-cable, pre-Internet times, competition was limited, and viewers sometimes watched programs that didn’t jibe with their likings. The mismatch could be frustrating, but it occasionally served an edifying purpose: forcing people to recognize other peoples, different tastes, distant knowledge . . . if they wanted to tune in at all. Yes, the concentration of media in a few hands sometimes engendered a cultural arrogance among the producers and an ideological narrowness in the programming. But it also introduced young minds to what they might have missed if they had obeyed only their own dispositions.
I remember coming home to Maryland for Christmas break after spending my first term at UCLA in 1977. I looked forward to sleeping in and hanging out, playing basketball in a cold gym before lunch, seeing friends at night, and watching
Star Trek
reruns in the afternoon. But the TV schedule had changed, and my only options from two to four were soap operas,
The Gong Show,
a talk show (Mike Douglas, I think it was, or Donahue), and a special series on PBS. The PBS offering was unusual, a lineup of American and foreign films from the silent era forward that went by the name (I think) the Janus Film Series. Soap operas were out, and the Unknown Comic and Chuck Barris got old quickly. I stuck with the movies, and in the subsequent three weeks I watched for the first time
La Strada, Metropolis, Wild Strawberries, The Battleship Potemkin, L’Avventura, The 400 Blows,
and
The Rules of the Game.
Parts of them I didn’t understand, and I certainly couldn’t share the experience with my friends, but when the soldiers marched down the Odessa steps, when the Parisian boy reached the sands of the coastline and the camera froze on his face, when the day-trippers combed the island for the lost Anna . . . the screen imparted something unavailable on the b-ball court or over the phone. My empty afternoons and PBS programmers airing shows unlikely to garner a large afternoon audience came together to deliver odd and haunting tales and sightings to an idle mind. It wasn’t always enjoyable—the petty intrigues of Renoir’s aristocrats at a rural estate hardly excited me—but the impression that in these films a serious enterprise was under way, that film could yield a different space and time, light and perspective, was entrancing. I returned to UCLA a novice, taking several film courses and hitting the revival houses (as they were called then) every other week. The experience lingers today, but here’s the important lesson: if I had had a hundred screen options to choose from, it never would have happened.
Star Trek
reruns in the afternoon. But the TV schedule had changed, and my only options from two to four were soap operas,
The Gong Show,
a talk show (Mike Douglas, I think it was, or Donahue), and a special series on PBS. The PBS offering was unusual, a lineup of American and foreign films from the silent era forward that went by the name (I think) the Janus Film Series. Soap operas were out, and the Unknown Comic and Chuck Barris got old quickly. I stuck with the movies, and in the subsequent three weeks I watched for the first time
La Strada, Metropolis, Wild Strawberries, The Battleship Potemkin, L’Avventura, The 400 Blows,
and
The Rules of the Game.
Parts of them I didn’t understand, and I certainly couldn’t share the experience with my friends, but when the soldiers marched down the Odessa steps, when the Parisian boy reached the sands of the coastline and the camera froze on his face, when the day-trippers combed the island for the lost Anna . . . the screen imparted something unavailable on the b-ball court or over the phone. My empty afternoons and PBS programmers airing shows unlikely to garner a large afternoon audience came together to deliver odd and haunting tales and sightings to an idle mind. It wasn’t always enjoyable—the petty intrigues of Renoir’s aristocrats at a rural estate hardly excited me—but the impression that in these films a serious enterprise was under way, that film could yield a different space and time, light and perspective, was entrancing. I returned to UCLA a novice, taking several film courses and hitting the revival houses (as they were called then) every other week. The experience lingers today, but here’s the important lesson: if I had had a hundred screen options to choose from, it never would have happened.
For today’s young users, it doesn’t. Their choices are never limited, and the initial frustrations of richer experiences send them elsewhere within seconds. With so much abundance, variety, and speed, users key in to exactly what they already want. Companionship is only a click away. Congeniality fills their inboxes. Why undergo the labor of revising values, why face an incongruent outlook, why cope with disconfirming evidence, why expand the sensibility . . . when you can find ample sustenance for present interests? Dense content, articulate diction, and artistic images are too much. They don’t challenge young users to learn more and heighten taste. They remind them of their deficiencies, and who wants that? Confirmation soothes, rejection hurts. Great art is tough, mass art is easy. Dense arguments require concentration, adolescent visuals hit home instantly.
The Web universe licenses young Americans to indulge their youth, and the ubiquitous rhetoric of personalization and empowerment—
My
Space,
You
Tube,
etc.—disguises the problem and implants false expectations well into adulthood. They don’t realize that success in popular online youthworlds breeds incompetence in school and in the workplace. With no guidance from above, with content purveyors aiming to attract audiences, not educate them, young users think that communications come easy. With fewer filters on people’s input and output, young users think that their opinions count and their talents suffice. They don’t realize what it really takes to do well. Bill Joy’s further remarks at the Aspen Institute panel pointedly identify this unfortunate combination of open access and mistaken self-evaluation:
My
Space,
You
Tube,
etc.—disguises the problem and implants false expectations well into adulthood. They don’t realize that success in popular online youthworlds breeds incompetence in school and in the workplace. With no guidance from above, with content purveyors aiming to attract audiences, not educate them, young users think that communications come easy. With fewer filters on people’s input and output, young users think that their opinions count and their talents suffice. They don’t realize what it really takes to do well. Bill Joy’s further remarks at the Aspen Institute panel pointedly identify this unfortunate combination of open access and mistaken self-evaluation:
People are fooling themselves that they’re being creative in these spaces, that the standard of creativity in the world to be competitive and to be a great designer is very hard. You have to go to school, you have to apprentice, you have to do hard things. It’s not about your friends like something you did. . . . And so, I think this is setting a false expectation you can create your little island and people can come to it in a video game. . . .The real problem is, by democratizing speech and the ability to post, we’ve lost the gradation for quality. The gradation for quality always was based on the fact that words have weight, that it costs money to move them around, so there was back pressure against junk.
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