Does the iGen have the attention span of…oh look, feet!
Every so often, it reappears in the media. You’ve seen it. The claim that the internet/videogames/mobile phones/technology are making us stupid. The ‘always-on’ stream of information at our (read: young people’s) fingertips is creating a generation who are lazy, unfocused, and undisciplined (and probably immoral, gluttenous and cruel to boot!)
Having read pieces like this and the rather (in)famous “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, I’m not convinced by the ‘vessal shaping the liquid’ arguments, that the instantaneous nature of our online interactions and forays is dumbing us down. For a start, it reeks of oversimplification. When I read passages like this (from “Google is Making Us Stupid):
My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I don’t see the automatic link to the internet (hyperlink or otherwise). Dare I suggest that Google isn’t the only factor? Maybe you’re just getting old. (Isn’t intelligence, focus, and reasoning ability factored to age?)
Okay, cheap shot. But when people like this cry “think of the children” when they claim that attention span isn’t what it used to be, I think of the thousands - nay, probably millions - of young Harry Potter fans who refused to go to bed until they finished the chapter - or the whole book! When it appeals, these so-called ‘ritalin victims’ can be incredibly focused, consuming whole books that nearly weigh more than they do.
The start of that sentence, is, I think, the key. When it appeals. Googling hasn’t destroyed people’s ability to engage with, enjoy, or react to extensive texts. It’s just opened up to them a wider range of texts, and in doing so, made them more choosy in what they spend there precious time on. They engage because they want to, not because someone is telling them to. Oooh, kids are challenging authority. Call the six o’clock news! /sarcasm
What I’m getting at, in a round-about way, is this idea of being differently literate. Not better, not worse — different. We can’t evaluate them side-by-side. It would be like comparing apples and oranges. It’s certainly true from my own classroom experiences that students skim, they cherry-pick, they summarize. Whilst my older colleagues bemoan the fact that whole books are no longer read as a single document, I’m not so concerned. For what I’m seeing is students, instead of going to one tome of authority, are instead flittering across vast bodies of work, finding threads that appeal (there’s that word again) to them and their reasons for engaging in the field in the first place. And whilst direct comparisons are problematic at best, I do think students are developing a more diverse understanding of their fields. No, they can’t always quote “authorities” — but they can summarize, paraphrase, and even recontextualize the arguments. And given a choice between the two, I’d prefer my students to be able to do the latter.
What I think we’re seeing is a generation coming up who have literacies more in-tune with the world around them, that are more applicable for the demands placed on them both as students and as fledgling citizens. Yes, their knowledge is broader rather than deep. But imagine what will happen over time as they build on that broad initial layer. Like a stack of pancakes, they’ll pile layer on layer, refining their corpus of information and applying their multiliteracy (a term often used and abused in this blog) and following their interests to build a knowledge that is specific to them.
For my money, I don’t think the way forward is to drag them, kicking and screaming, back to a “three-R’s” model of literacy and knowledge development. Give them the basics, sure. Make sure they can construct a sentence and use an (online) dictionary. But teach them also to critically evaluate the information they are skimming over, and to follow ideas through. Teach them to use Google to its full potential, and every other source, paper and electronic, out there. Teach them to be literate for tomorrow, not yesterday.
I don’t think the future will be poorer for it. Quite the opposite.
