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How Dumb Can We Get Susan Jacoby Analysis

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The Cease of Journalism in the Digital Age Waking up on a Sunday morning, enjoying a freshly brewed mug of coffee, relaxing at home reading the newspaper… to most Americans, this would seem like an ideal leisurely weekend. This has been a social norm for almost a century up until only recently. Now, we find ourselves lazily staying in bed catching up on social media, text messages, and the occasional news blurb located conveniently within our smartphones. Because of this conveniency, technology has had a considerable negative impact on traditional journalism during the last decade. As a nation, Americans have experienced nothing but the rise of journalism since its birth in the mid-1600s. Starting off with hand-written bulletins, gazettes, and graduating to widespread newspaper publications, our entire nation has consistently been supplied with reliably sourced and usually unbiased information and educational articles. Having twenty-four seven instant access to the internet has changed the way we receive, read, and perceive information… but how so? Susan Jacoby’s article, “How Dumb Can We Get?” references this subject matter throughout. …show more content…

She describes the rise of technology as “[...] a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science, and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.” Is this truly what Americans are doing in their spare time? According to measurements by comScore, the top apps downloaded by smartphone users in the last year include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and Snapchat. Slowly but surely, our love of learning is being replaced by the societal norms of social

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