With technology advancing and making life easier, one aspect of life is getting harder: thinking. There is simply less thinking involved in daily life. If we continue at this rate, our nation will become less intelligent.
Technology makes answers constantly available, whether it is for a science project, history DBQ, or a book report. With all these answers laid out in front of students, they are able to think less and less while doing their assignments.
“Technology gives us access to things we want, it makes it easier for us to get information with a small amount of effort,” Paige Savarese, freshman, said. “It has helped us advance, but has also shortened our attention span, because we only want what we’re looking for and don’t look beyond the information that’s presented.”
In the past, getting answers was time consuming and took a lot more thinking. For example, if students want to find information about a subject, they would have to go to the library, think about which book would provide the best information, and then read through the book to get the information.
When the internet did not exist, answers were found in an encyclopedia, not Wikipedia. People would actually have to find and read the appropriate section to find what they were looking for. With answers just a click away, there is not as much free reading or even reading in general.
“Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media, such as video games and television, do not,” Patrick Greenfield, UCLA professor of psychology and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, said in an article on UCLA Newsroom’s website.
Entertainment is very important to youths today, who are constantly entertained by technology, whether it is through video games, television shows, and the smart phone.
“I feel like most kids need to be constantly entertained,” Marissa Wayne, senior, said. “Even a cell phone is not just a phone anymore; it can be anything you want, and kids are constantly on their phones texting or playing games when they’re bored.”
This boredom translates to school, causing students to have less focus in the classroom. More and more classes have been getting more involved with technology, but having the internet and using it for education may not be a benefit to a student’s education, Greenfield’s study shows.
Among the studies Greenfield analyzed was a classroom study showing that students who were given access to the Internet during class and were encouraged to use it during lectures did not process what the speaker said as well as students who did not have Internet access. When students were tested after class lectures, those who did not have Internet access performed better than those who did, according to an article on UCLA Newsroom’s website.
When searching for an answer, complex information is not as desirable to youths as the basic and straight forward information. By using the internet, youths can find easy-to-read, dumbed down facts.
“Usually dumbing things down shows a sign of intelligence and understanding, because if you can understand the broad topic and put it into words a second grader can understand. That’s a good thing,” Savarese said, but Savarese points out the shortcoming we face . “Our generation understands at that second grade level.”