Do You Have Time On Your Hands?
The media is perhaps the most powerful (other than the family) aspect in socialization and in controlling how people think and what they do. According to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the New York Times, people between the ages of 8-18 use media technology (this can be anything from cell phones to television) about eight hours a day. This study does not count the cell phones use of texting and calling. Five years ago, the average use of digital media that people in this age range was six to six and a half hours. Here is the post from the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/education/20wired.html
It is predicted that the average will only rise over time. Can this be a good thing for the future? Or is it bad that people are engaged with the media for so long? There are both advantages and disadvantages of being engaged in media for so long in a day. One distinct advantage of engaging in media for profound periods of time is that it teaches you a lot of different information and how to find a lot of different information in such a short amount of time. A great example is when you are doing a research project, instead of going to the library and looking at book after book after book, all you have to do is just get on the internet and search what you are looking for in a search engine. A disadvantage of using the media for such long periods of time is that one can lose the ability of normal human to human interaction and face to face communication which is very valuable in our society. If people are always online, they are also risking getting obese because they are inactive for most of the day, so this could lead to more important health issues which cannot be ignored.
There are also some humors that because of all the time people are spending on the web that the generation of today is becoming “dumb”. According to Mark Bauerlein, today’s generation which uses a lot of media technology, is becoming dumb because according to him “the generation of the Digital Natives cannot focus or concentrate on things as how generations in the past used to.” I think that this is irrelevant, people do have a lot of distractions today as compared to past generations, but I do not think that the media we use is affecting how “smart” we are. We cannot compare our “smartness” with past generations because it is not fair, they did not have the technology that we do not have now. In talking about concentration, they probably had more time to concentrate on things more, but humans can still achieve that high level of focus and concentration, if we didn’t, then all this technology and the counter-argument which I am making against Mark Bauerlein, would be nearly impossible. All in all, I think it is arrogant to even call our generation the “smartest generation” because in the future, people will be dreaming up of technology which we can’t even dream of right now. Past generations have also been smart, if it was not for them, then we would not have the technology which we have today.
The media is perhaps the most powerful (other than the family) aspect in socialization and in controlling how people think and what they do. According to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the New York Times, people between the ages of 8-18 use media technology (this can be anything from cell phones to television) about eight hours a day. This study does not count the cell phones use of texting and calling. Five years ago, the average use of digital media that people in this age range was six to six and a half hours. Here is the post from the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/education/20wired.html
It is predicted that the average will only rise over time. Can this be a good thing for the future? Or is it bad that people are engaged with the media for so long? There are both advantages and disadvantages of being engaged in media for so long in a day. One distinct advantage of engaging in media for profound periods of time is that it teaches you a lot of different information and how to find a lot of different information in such a short amount of time. A great example is when you are doing a research project, instead of going to the library and looking at book after book after book, all you have to do is just get on the internet and search what you are looking for in a search engine. A disadvantage of using the media for such long periods of time is that one can lose the ability of normal human to human interaction and face to face communication which is very valuable in our society. If people are always online, they are also risking getting obese because they are inactive for most of the day, so this could lead to more important health issues which cannot be ignored.
There are also some humors that because of all the time people are spending on the web that the generation of today is becoming “dumb”. According to Mark Bauerlein, today’s generation which uses a lot of media technology, is becoming dumb because according to him “the generation of the Digital Natives cannot focus or concentrate on things as how generations in the past used to.” I think that this is irrelevant, people do have a lot of distractions today as compared to past generations, but I do not think that the media we use is affecting how “smart” we are. We cannot compare our “smartness” with past generations because it is not fair, they did not have the technology that we do not have now. In talking about concentration, they probably had more time to concentrate on things more, but humans can still achieve that high level of focus and concentration, if we didn’t, then all this technology and the counter-argument which I am making against Mark Bauerlein, would be nearly impossible. All in all, I think it is arrogant to even call our generation the “smartest generation” because in the future, people will be dreaming up of technology which we can’t even dream of right now. Past generations have also been smart, if it was not for them, then we would not have the technology which we have today.
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