In some classes, you knew the teacher would take your phone
away for the day if you were caught. In others, you knew you could comfortably
text atop your desk while half-listening to a dated Physical Education VHS
without the teacher so much as raising an eyebrow, beyond caring. Others
appreciated attention while they were addressing the class but didn’t care how
you chose to spend your work time. Some would make an example of you. Most, if
not all, were disconcerted by cellphone use, and shocked by its consistency in
teenager’s lives. That’s natural, considering it is downright rude to not give
your attention to a speaker. I wonder, though, what those teachers would have
thought about the cellphone use on a fundamental level.
Richtel raises an issue concerning technology used by
teenagers today, including but not exclusive to smart phones. He suggests there
is a problem emerging to do with the constant multi-tasking, gadget-using youth
of today who are finding it harder to concentrate then ever before. The real
concern is, that this in turn is harming the learning and good habits that should
be occurring during the high school years. Richtel centres his analysis of what
is going on around a newly aspiring-to-be filmmaker, aged 17 years old by the
name of Vishal Singh. Other teenagers at Vishal’s school are also observed and
interviewed. Richtel examines how schools are struggling to adapt to this new
age, trying to utilize technology to help engage students in learning what is
being taught to them.
Co-constitution suggests that technology is creating us as
much as we create it. There are times, I must admit, I do not like what it is
creating. But do I blame my procrastination on my beeping cellphone? Do I
refuse accepting any responsibility for my laziness and say it is because I
have easy access to Youtube? No. I don’t leave my blog at fault for my short
attention span, or despise my cruel fate of being born into a digital era.
Perhaps I am not the right person to ask, because I don’t
have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even a cellphone that I check often. But
I can still smell bullcrap when Allison, a student at Woodside High School,
blames technology for her grades, and not herself, being what you might call an
extremist when it comes to texting. Richtel must have loved that, seeing as his
view on texting by teens is reduced to abbreviations and “quick greetings”. But
hey, they can get more meaningful that, as he points out, suggesting that
gossiping about drama exemplifies the most “in-depth” conversation a teenager
could have over text-messaging. From experience as a student in high school, I
have had wonderful and fulfilling conversations about the world, art, music,
philosophy, nature and even simple ironies in life that make you go “huh” and
stir a desire to share it with someone else.
Richtel speaks from the position of someone who is concerned
about teenager’s priorities – someone who is a part of the adult community responsible
for shaping future contributors of society. But at times he writes about them
as if they are aliens to the world, completely unaware of anything and in dire
need of guidance. I can’t agree with that completely, and I didn’t enjoy
reading him describe an experiment with boys concerning brain activity and go
on to describe rat experiments, making the teenagers sound like test-subjects
and not free-willed human beings (no offense to rats intended). I wouldn’t mind
seeing Richtel speak for people of his own generation to consider the right and
wrong doings concerning adults and their uses of technology. They are, after
all, the ones who market smartphones, video games and TV programs to teenagers.
There are studies that suggest the Internet may affect our
cognitive abilities and attention spans. But I could just picture the loud
burst of laughter of my older family members in reaction to this, who would heartily
exclaim that such problems with youth concerning laziness, ability to focus and
distractions existed long before this digital age. Sean of Woodside High School
made mention to this, that his obsession with video games would have been
channeled into something like TV had he been born in an earlier generation.
Sean makes an interesting observation – rather than blaming technology for
distracting him as the other interviewed teens did, enticing him with its
splendors and boredom-killing charm – he says that video games (and arguably
other vehicles of “distraction” such as Facebook, Youtube, cellphones, etc)
aren’t responsible for the void in teenager’s minds. Their roles begin and end
at filling it.
I want to make one thing clear, however - I definitely agree
that there is something bizarre about this need to constantly be stimulated and
absorbed in technology, eyes ever-glued to a screen. My friends tell me of
feeling distressed and that they are missing out on something important when
not able to connect to the various social media platforms they are a part of.
Why is it that these students feel an unbearable need to be distracted,
fulfilled with feedback and comforted by instant gratification so incessantly? That,
to me, is the more important question. Knowing why might actually help to
create and facilitate a more harmonic balance of priorities in today’s youth,
opening their eyes to the peace found in moderation and the knowledge obtained
in reflection. It is easy to be overwhelmed in a world that seems to take so
much of our time and measure it in dollar signs; it is no wonder we multi-task.
The only real way to combat it and still be a part of it is to achieve a
balance.
I often want to shake the stranger next to me while we wait
by a bus stop and shout at them. Look up at the sky, look how beautiful and
vast it is! Appreciate it with me, if only for a moment, and then return to
your phone. Upon doing so they may notice it has gone black, the screen now reflecting
the sky above them. I do not suggest here that the world this stranger left for
a second to be with me is a “virtual” one, as Richtel irritatingly put it, but
that it is another world. Perhaps it
might remind them to try and spend quality time in both.
