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The Dumbest Generation By Mark Bauerlein

1354 Words6 Pages

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don 't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein is a commentary on the culture of Generation Y and its lack of basic knowledge and intelligence in a society inundated with easily accessible information. At the dawn of the digital age, those who had navigated adolescence and adulthood without the aid of the internet looked on to the forthcoming generation with eyes full of hope, anticipating an influx of well-educated, web-savvy children ready to fix the world. These hopeful gazes, according to Bauerlein, were met with an uneducated mass of bobble heads lacking basic knowledge engrossed solely in the lives of other teens or twenty-somethings. …show more content…

The conclusion that this age group is dumb is not incorrect, but the conclusion that this group is dumber than others is incorrect. He shows little evidence that the stats are more shocking than they would be for other groups. When Bauerlein does make a comparison concluding that all the generations are uneducated, he flips by stating that because this generation has so much access to information and isn’t using it properly that they are even dumber in comparison simply because they have more options to learn. Basically, this is Bauerlein saying since this generation isn’t as smart as he thinks they should be they are actually dumber that they ought to be. His focus is myopic and misinformed, since there is no impartial, accurate comparison provided. These arguments are also slightly outdated since the book was written in 2008. He wrote this before Twitter or Instagram blew up online and began to be a platform for news and political campaigning. What Bauerlein has in statistics and evidence, he lacks in tact and objectivity. He is clumping and entire bracket of people into this cross between Britney Spears and Justin Bieber, insulting the large proportion of those who actually enjoy books and the news and who don’t base their worth on the amount of followers they have or the kind of shoes they wear. For decades the older people have been ranting on and on about the failings of the youth blaming it on rock music, not working in factories for sixteen hours a day, comic books, and now video games and technology alike. This novel simply adds to the ever widening chasm separating the old from the young. The education system has been failing for years and that was not initiated by Twitter or shooter games. These arguments are simply a knee jerk fear reaction to the uncertainty of the nation’s future. This is something

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