There are 2 kinds of people in today’s society, “digital immigrants” and “digital natives.” Author, Robert Weiss, describes a “digital native” as anyone born into the digital era and an “immigrant” as someone born before and had to adjust into the digital era. While technology advancements, specifically talking about phones, tablets, computers, social media, and video games affect both of these groups in some way, the vast majority are worried about how it affects the “natives,” the leaders of the decades to come. Some may argue that the exposure to all of this technology allows for the youth to nourish in the resources readily available to them. Instead, these devices such as phones, tablets, computers, social media, and video games are actually affecting young people in a negative way. 

 There can be some good when it comes to the digital age. Access to the Internet has allowed anyone to be clicks away from reading about information they could ever want to know. There are books, journals, and articles that can be downloaded as well as delivery services that can send books to a house that can save time and money. Youth’s access to smartphones and tablets can allow for people to stay in with others whenever, no matter where they are. Some may say this is good, causing adolescents to stray from boredom. These people would also argue that being in contact with friends and family constantly could improve communication skills because they are always talking to each other. After reading this essay, you will understand while there can be benefits to these advancements in technology, “digital natives” aren’t taking advantage of them and that communicating over a cell phone is different than having a face to face to face conversation, and an different structure of writing.

One of the most relevant, and serious side effects of these pieces of technology on youth and teens is cyber bullying. Kids go online looking to open up and broadcast their life with others, whether they are looking for help regarding a problem or simply want to keep people informed with their life, but what they don’t realize is it also opens up the possibility for incredible ridicule. Hannah Smith, a 14-year-old girl, went onto a popular social media site looking to express her feelings regarding her eczema and how she felt ugly. Anonymous users told her to cut herself and to “Do us all a favor n kill ur self.” A month later she did and it was those responses to thank for her lost life. While incidents like Smith’s are rare, cyber bullying in general is not, and 43% of students report experiencing it at least once in their lifetime (Patchin, 2015). Kids today are looking to the Internet and social media as a way of forming their identity. They believe that they need validation from their friends, and even strangers to have confidence in themselves and believe that they are okay. Instead of just being able to compare themselves to each other in the hallway at school, they are now able to do it 24/7 using social media with an unlimited amount of people. 

Mark Bauerlein, 58-year-old professor of English at Emory University believes that this digital era has caused the youth to become the “dumbest generation.” Due to all the constant distractions going through the youth’s minds, they have collectively lost an interest in history, politics, and any interest of reading books. Even though the Internet and devices have made this generation dumber, it shouldn’t have been this way. Never has there been a time where there is such opportunity for education and learning. Kids and Teens are clicks away from an endless amount of information on the web that they could use to stay informed with what really matters in today’s world. But instead, the youth would rather focus on social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram being the most popular to be exact in the year 2016 according to a survey done by lifewire.com. Rather than being productive and learning about something that really matters, young people would rather learn about the latest gossip surrounding the people they know, and stay up to date with pop culture. This problem stems from the idea that every young person can’t miss out on anything and that keeping up with these things will make them “cool in school.” In on of Bauerlein’s classes, he tells his college students that they are six times more likely to know who the latest American Idol is than you are to know who the speaker of the U.S. House is. The response he got from a voice in the crowd was “ ‘American Idol’ is more important.” This is exactly what Bauerlein is talking about when describing the affect of this peer-to-peer activity as what he calls the “pull of immaturity.” The only people the youth are becoming connected with on the internet are people the same age and it is a bunch of mimicry and judging, instead of using their time to connect with teachers and other adult figures that could teach us things. Social media, in all, crowds out the important things and brings the young people’s attention to drama, and what the Kardashian’s are wearing. 

Similar to Bauerlein’s theory that “digital natives” are becoming dumber, author Robert Weiss from the Huffington Post believes that these digital devices are causing a generation gap. Basically, he believes that the constant distractions clouding the youth’s mind are causing them to become disconnected from the rest of the world, especially their elders. He begins his article by talking about 2 grandparents who take their grandchildren, 14 and 11 years old, out to dinner one night. Excited to catch up with what is going on in their grandchildren’s lives, they soon realize that the kids are completely distracted by their Ipad and IPhone, posting their whereabouts on Facebook and Twitter. As they took a glance around the restaurant, they saw a group of 20 year olds sitting down also for dinner. All of them except for 2 where doing the same exact thing that the grandchildren were doing. They were all face deep in their smart phones. For this reason exactly, many refer to these “digital natives” as the “lost generation.” While the grandparents thought it was somewhat rude that the kids were giving them no attention, the kids as well as the other table of 20 year olds could see nothing wrong. These young people have been so attached to technology their entire lives that it’s the only way they know how to live. For that reason, they have a different definition of what it means to be respectful, attentive, and how to communicate with others. In a Clinical Study released in 2010, they found that half young Americans logged onto social media at least once per day, and a quarter of them logging on 10 times or more a day. In the same year, a study released by Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 3 quarter of American teens owned a cell phone with 88% texting regularly. This same survey was conducted 2 years later and the numbers continued to rise. It is clear that the more technology progresses, the more young people become attached to their digital devices. Results in that study also found that the main way of communication was text messaging, extremely surpassing phone calls and face-to-face communication. While this young generation sees nothing wrong with this, older generations can’t agree. Rather than waiting to be able to talk on the phone, or see someone in person, young people find it easier and more convenient to shoot someone a text and wait for their response. While some may say this isn’t a big deal, it is teaching the youth that physically communicating with people isn’t necessary, which is something they’ll learn they need to be skilled with later in their life. 

Not only has this technology made the youth “dumber”, but it has also made them lazier. Bauerlein describes the Internets new nature as a place where people go to “seek out what they already hope to find, and they want it fast and free, with a minimum of effort.” When these young people go online, they are able to do anything, causing them to stray away and stick with anything that ever bores or challenges them. “Going online habituates them to juvenile mental habits,” says Bauerlein. Because of these strings of bad habits and juvenile behaviors, the youth are in return becoming more and more disconnected from the “adult” world. This includes culture, tradition, history and even the ability to sit down for more than a couple minutes and read an article or book. In return, it is causing these young people to become a community that consistently has the issue of illiteracy, bad spelling, and posting on social media endlessly, causing confusion between the things that are important and what aren’t. While bad spelling may seem like a problem to most adult figures, it isn’t to the youth. On social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, people are ridiculed for coherent paragraphs and proper spelling. Instead, “text” talk and abbreviations are encouraged which can actually have an affect on these young people’s overall writing skills.  What this endless posting and need for social media has created is a narcissistic and self-absorbed society. Every thing important to the young people of today is all about them. Whether it’s ranting about their problems on twitter or posting a selfie to Instagram, everything the youth really focuses on revolves around them. While it may not seem like a big deal, it really can become one, especially like when Bauerlein says half of his English students would rather focus on what is going on with them on social media than pay attention in class. 

Another huge problem concerning the youth when it comes to technology is topic of plagiarism. Going along with the idea of laziness, poor writing and spelling skills, and the lack of critical reading, the youth is turning to plagiarism, which is expressed by author Peter Paul. He coincides with the idea of Bauerlein that adolescents are becoming lazier human beings, lacking the desire or even effort necessary in order to think independently about a topic and reach a deeper understanding. It is so easy today for young people to go on the internet and use Google to find summaries of the information they are supposed to be researching, like the websites of Sparknotes and Cliff Notes for example. Even after reading these summaries and shortcutting the process of doing information on their own, young people continue to simply copy and paste sections and try to say it is their own words. Whether it is because they simply don’t know how to construct writing on their own, or just don’t have the effort to do it, this epidemic has become extremely popular within the past couple of years. It is sad because instead of taking advantage of the immense amount of information and resources online, young people would rather not spend the time to create things using their own words. This just shows how the Internet is causing the youth to act in a shallow manor, settling for efficient retrieval of information instead of making them active and informed members with the rest of society. 

Straying away from the topic of social media and the Internet, video games have become a hinder on the “digital native” generation. Director, Delaney Rutson, talks about this concerning problem in her movie Screenagers. The film gives insights from children and parents about how the youth feel towards the topic of video game consoles, and games on platforms such as iphones and ipads. In all, it has become very clear that kids would rather spend their time playing video games that have little to no benefit on their development into adults rather than things that could benefit them like school and extracurricular activities. Many parents found that their kids lie about doing homework or just don’t care enough to do it because they would rather spend their time in front of a television playing games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Not only does this mean it is taking their attention from things that matter, but it is causing them to care more about violent video games that center around killing other people and have factors such as drugs and prostitution. Cases have become so severe that children will tell their parents they are sick in order to stay home and play these games all day, showing what their priorities really are. While some may argue that they are just kids being kids, it still has an effect on their overall development. 

There is no doubt that the advances in technology discussed could benefit “digital natives” in a positive way. Due to the fact the way these young people are using the advancements in phones, tablets, social media, computers, and video games, it is affecting them rather in a negative way. Instead of taking advantage of the resources readily available to them, this generation is becoming lazier, and dumber described by Bauerlein. Also, it is causing them to become disconnected from other generations, but they see nothing wrong with this. Problems like plagiarism and cyber bullying are becoming more relevant each day, as more of the youth continue to turn to the Internet and social media. Simple people skills such as communication are being compromised as texting continues to take over within the youth population instead of calling and face-to-face communication. If these young people aren’t exposed to what is happening to their generation, they may become lost forever. Not only does it affect them, but also the generations to come, showing that it is okay to act in this manor when it simply is not.  
