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Young and strong and unable to concentrate

November 23, 2010 by jimmycsays

Taken together, a series of stories in The Star and a Sunday take-out in The New York Times offer up a volatile cocktail that makes the future of our country look loopy. 

The Star’s three-part series, “A Generation in Free Fall,” began Sunday and concluded today. It explores, in troubling detail, the diminished career opportunities that people in their early 20s are facing.

As writers Scott Canon and Diane Stafford put it, “It’s a generation stalled, exiled from an economy hung over from a crash set off by house-flippers, mortgage scammers and Wall Street shell games.”

The unemployment rate for Americans 20 to 24, Canon and Stafford report, is 15 percent — twice as high as 10 years ago.

The counterpoint to Canon’s and Stafford’s fine stories is Matt Richtel’s front-page centerpiece, in Sunday’s Times, headlined “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.”

The photo above the headline tells the story: Three California school girls are sitting shoulder to shoulder at an outdoor table during lunch, but they are not eating and they are not talking. Each is texting. 

Richtel gets to the guts of the matter in the fifth and sixth paragraphs:

“Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

“Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.”

Richtel knows this subject well. Earlier this year, he won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a 2009 series called “Driven to Distraction,” which is about the problems inherent in driving and multitasking, including texting.

For his latest piece, Richtel interviewed a 14-year-old girl who sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month and can carry on as many as seven text conversations at a time.

Another student, a boy, said  the lure of the Internet kept him from finishing either of his two summer reading books. “My attention span is getting worse,” he admitted.

So, look at the deadly dilemma here: Fewer jobs available for the foreseeable future and millions of kids who can’t, or choose not to, focus on their school work.

Now, I realize that the distraction of the Internet, video games and cellphone usage is not causing the job shortage. But it seems to me that distracted youths are at a distinct disadvantage when they have the chance to interview for the jobs that are open. And when the job tourniquet eases, many youths might find themselves complaining not that jobs aren’t available, but that they just can’t land them. Or, if they’re able to land them, they can’t hold onto them. 

Anyone who has a college degree can testify that higher education requires great focus. And everyone who has ever had a good job knows how important focus and attention to detail are to success in the workplace.

So, what’s going to happen with this generation of young people with their 15-second attention spans? It’s not promising, is it?

It is a part of the decline, in my view, of the American culture. Other evidence of that decline is the ebbing of manners and the rise of road rage and boorish behavior.

I’m a substitute teacher in the Shawnee Mission School District. I frequently catch students texting in class — a prohibited activity, of course. I tell violators to put the phone away. The second time I catch someone, I usually send him or her to the office with a referral slip.

Is that going to change their behavior? Probably not. I understand that. But teachers and other responsible adults have a responsibility, in my opinion, to try to get students to practice self-control and to tune out the distractions. 

Frequently, I ask students how they like whatever book they’re reading in their English classes. (That’s the subject I usually teach.)

“Boring!” is often the refrain that comes back at me.

I’ve heard students say that about Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and other great works. Why do they say such books are boring? It has nothing to do with the stories, of course; it has to do with many students’ inability or unwillingness to sit still for 10 minutes and give themselves a chance to get into the stories.

It’s easier and more tempting to fire off another text, or turn to a video game, or search for something light and breezy on YouTube. 

I hate to overstate this, and I sure hope I’m wrong, but when I look down the road — at the future of our country and the prospective caliber of our citizens – I don’t like the view.

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Posted in journalism, Uncategorized | Tagged Driven to Distraction, Matt Richtel, The New York Times, Your Brain on Computers | 4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. on November 24, 2010 at 10:38 am Kate Corwin

    By far the biggest issue I face everyday teaching urban high school students is their phones. Two years ago they had phones and would get calls during class even though I ask them to turn them off before we start. But it’s worse now. They have new phones and can text and also access the internet and their Facebook pages. I have to work so hard to make the activities interesting enough to keep their attention, even for a short period of time. Are we “creating” our ADD crisis?


  2. on November 24, 2010 at 11:05 am jfitzpatr

    Perfect example, Kate…You know, this is such a conundrum. Technology has been a great boon in countless ways. But what if it ends up creating several generations of people who cannot focus on anything for any significant amount of time? Future generations could look back on the technological revolution as the main reason for the downfall of our society. I hope that Matt Richtel and others who have a good perspective on this problem can begin moving us toward the realization that an antidote is in order. I don’t know what that antidote is, but we need to start thinking seriously about it.

    Jim


  3. on December 1, 2010 at 5:44 pm Jason Schneider

    Hits home like a two-ton heavy thing! I have a 20-year-old son at home and literally had to ground him from his X-Box. He has trouble understanding why I had to do this. I explained that I was having trouble understanding why he doesn’t have a full-time job but has six hours a day to spend shooting at cartoon characters. I feel like the biggest problem is youngsters have no accountability, no repercussions, like there were when I was a kid. Back then, when you screwed up, someone was there to let you know about it and held you responsible. Nowadays, it seems there is always an excuse for why “Little Johnny” can’t behave, stay on task, etc…

    Jason @ Value Auto Clinic

    P.S. He’s not getting that X-Box back until he starts acting like the adult that he is.


  4. on December 1, 2010 at 8:38 pm jfitzpatr

    Thanks for weighing in (and reading), Jason. I didn’t know you had an offspring that old! I sure hope he breaks the grip of the X-Box…Sometimes it’s gratifying, isn’t it, to come from an earlier generation? I think we who are in our 40s, 50s, 60s, etc., can put these distracting devices in better perspective and not allow them to consume us.

    Jim



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