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Paul Nguyen

Ms. Lanz

AP Language/Composition A

20 March 2017

Hypothetically: The Dumbest Generation

To denote an entire generation the dumbest generation is in the eyes of many, an opinion

that may misinterpret and undermine a large population. There are many aspects and viewpoints

on this subject which all must be thought about before declaring today’s generation the dumbest

generation. Taking into consideration the amount of technological and societal advances from

today to the 1950’s would be exponential. Presently, the invention of the internet alone is able to

create thousands of instantaneous resources that are open to the public. The internet and the

digital age make it so that today’s generation include different attitudes on things such as: the

importance of particular subjects in school, patience to read books in their entirety, and even

societal issues. “For the young American, life has never been so yielding, goods so plentiful,

schooling so accessible, diversion so easy, and liberties so copious” (Bauerlein 167), in ​The

Dumbest Generation​, by Mark Bauerlein, Bauerlein introduces today’s society at a loss of

intellectual skills and knowledge. While this may hold true in some cases, today’s society still

manages to compensate for these losses through, “Changing from a nation of callused hands to a

nation of agile brains,” says cognitive scientist Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University”

(Begley 168).

Since the dawn of the digital age, technology and the aspects of young culture continually

evolves exponentially to social media apps, smartphones, and the most important of all the
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internet. With the invention of unseen concepts, “Young people acquire various forms of

literacy (technical and media) by exploring new interests, tinkering, and “messing around” with

new forms of media” (ITO ET AL.169). ITO ET AL. presents the case of young culture always

changing, and conformity in society slowly turning into differences. Nowadays, social media

provides a foundation for young culture to share ideas and the diffusion of these ideas move

rapidly via twitter or facebook. “Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often

more motivated to learn from peers than from adults” (ITO ET AL. 169), because youth feel the

pressure from adults all the time, they are more inclined to perform poorly and this misinterprets

today’s youth being dumb. The youth of this generation would rather collaborate together and

unite against the opposing old generation because they feel as if most of the old generation’s

priorities do not align with theirs. “Ignorance of so elementary a subject as the geography of the

U.S.” (Simpson 171), with the massive wave of technological advancements such as the internet,

fundamental or elementary subjects are at a push of a button by anyone and gives room to other

areas of education.

Today’s generation receives a large influx of technology and the problem occurring from

this would be how technology, “Supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of

thought” (Carr 170). A recent study “Your Brains On Video Games” by Steven Johnson from

Discover magazine, addresses video games and imply their effect on the human brain. Since

some video games require constant multi-tasking, “Playing the game (The Sims) is a nonstop

balancing act: sending one character off to work, cleaning the kitchen with another, searching

through the classifieds for work with another” (Johnson 172), the brain is put to work constantly

and there is no time to focus on individual thing. This dilemma ties into how the older
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generation would assume that the younger generation is dumb, since they would not be able to

consistently read books or remember elementary information such as geography, history, etc at

the rates that the older generation put up. Concentration, a key factor in reading, changes

significantly when a young person is constantly multi-tasking.

Proving someone to be dumb can have many loopholes if how the person perceives

intelligence or how a person measures intelligence is put into consideration. “But if dumb means

lacking such fundamental cognitive capacities as the ability to think critically and logically, to

analyze an argument, to learn and remember, to see analogies, to distinguish fact from

opinion...well, here Bauerlein is on shakier ground” (Begley 168), Begley collaborates on

today’s young generation changing significantly because of the choices they make and the

difference between the old to new generation in prioritizing. This difference is a great factor to

determine whether today’s generation is actually dumb or just taking different measures to

project their intelligence that the older generation fails to understand. A study also shows that,

“IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising

since the 1930s” (Begley 168), which would support the claim that intelligence in younger

generation is in fact growing but not easily accepted or perceived by the older generation.

Although today’s generation may claim higher levels of IQ and improvement in the

ability to multi-task, there remain few factors that today’s generation needs but lacks. Things

such as, “Knowledge and skills haven’t kept pace, and the intellectual habits that complement

them are slipping” (Bauerlein 167), Bauerlein addresses the problem of today’s generation losing

fundamental habits such as reading and focusing on things in order to succeed in one area. With

the digital age booming, children are learning through computer or Ipad screens instead of
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reading books which in turn leads to that trait of impatience. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by

Nicholas Carr, addresses the cons of this digital age and Carr provides personal anecdotes such

as, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a

jet-ski” (Carr 170), to emphasize the effect the digital age has on long-time readers like himself.

Reading books create a relationship between the reader and the actual book itself, meanwhile

using a piece of technology does not develop a special relationship between reader and piece of

literature.

Despite all these differences, in the end humans continue to grow and evolve with time.

There was a time when all humans did not read but instead pass down stories orally, and now the

time for reading books has pass and technology paves its way into normal human life. With the

advancement of technology and the growth of the digital age the older generation underestimates

the intelligence this new generation withholds. Although today’s generations knowledge,

intellectual habits, and skills are slipping away, they have created new habits such as

multi-tasking, expanding intellectual knowledge through society, and creating networks to

succeed with one another. With the digital age booming, there is a very slight chance that the

human race’s intelligence will plateau, but rather begin exponential growth of intelligence never

seen before in history.

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