Okay, I’ve been neglecting Haemet in Tieki’s absence. Truth is, once I’ve studied for the bar all day, I have the intellectual focus of a gnat on crack. Or is it the bar?
According to Prof. Mark Bauerlein, author of “The Dumbest Generation,” today’s youth are narcisstic, anti-intellectual mental midgets, thanks to the internet. Facebook and similar social-networking sites, apparently, kill our attention spans and the ability to relate to other people who are not our own age.
Supposedly, young adults (ages 15-24) spend only eight minutes reading every day. Now, let’s think through this. Obviously, internet use does not count as “reading,” even if it is a Wiki article or the news. Likewise, scholastic work does not count as “reading,” because there is simply no way that the average student spends less than 10 minutes a day reading for class. Given the massive proliferation of blogging, it is nearly inconceivable that college students would spend less than eight minutes a day on blog-related reading. (As a data point, I usually spend about 5 hours reading before I find something that strikes me as blog-worthy. There may be an additional hour or so of blog-related research for substantive posts.) Even Facebook, frivolous time-waster that it is, has its serious side: a lot of people post links to their blogs, or use the Notes section to link to news items of interest.
What does count, then? The pleasure reading that students - who find themselves swamped with school work, AP courses, SAT prep, jobs, volunteering, and sports - simply lack the time to do? Print newspapers only? If it can’t be found in Barnes & Noble, it’s not reading?
Now, this blogger was also a classics major, so she’s all about getting young people to read the literature and history that is the foundation of Western civilisation. Nevertheless, it should be obvious that we don’t need to denigrate young people in the process.
Sphere: Related Content
And then again, there’s the question of how much you can read in eight minutes…
…for instance, I’m not exactly a speed reader, and eight minutes is more than enough time to get through a chapter or two in your average novel.
It would be more useful (but probably sound less alarming)to say how many pages of print a person reads.
Besides, our literacy rate in this country is constantly increasing. Add to that the fact that what constitutes “basic” literacy is also expanding (as we become more information-dependent and our society becomes more complex)…and what we have is a population where a higher and higher percentage of people are meeting an increasingly difficult basic literacy standard…
This alarmism about our “failing” education system continues to perplex me, as well as all of this malarky about how information-rich media like the internet is making us dumber.
Sure, its changing our focus from one set of literacy skills (maintaining levels of interest in a text despite large amounts of non-relevant information, for example) and re-foucusing them on others (scanning, skimming, summarizing) But is that a BAD thing?
Maybe the current generation has a larget percentage of people who won’t be able to make it through Mellville or Tolstoy or Dickens (due to frustration/boredome with the meandering, unfocused style)…but even the previous generation would admit that they could have benefitted from an editor.
Time people got the hint that “changing” doesn’t always mean “bad”.
Teresa’s last blog post..Michael Sheard and A Man Called Roadkill
Great points, Teresa.
Thank you. 
I wonder: if people are getting used to having information distilled for them in a concise, reader-appropriate form, won’t that mean that there will be a market for people who are able to do such distilling, and, more importantly, people will become better writers?
Roxeanne,
Hey I’m always delighted when we can agree on something.
I think “better” is a loaded word. I mean, look at Mellville, Dickens and Tolstoy. Their works have a richness that is lacking in most modern literature.
I think people will become more focused and efficient, and I think that works like that dont necessarily have to be ‘unartistic”…but that is a danger of “better” writing.
Take it from a copy-writer.
One of the reasons I ramble on my blog a lot is simply for the sheer joy of unfettered wool-gathering. And more than one or two people seem to enjoy reading it. 
though few comment.
Teresa’s last blog post..Kitties in trouble!