In
recent weeks I’ve seen articles about how reading is good for your longevity.
Then today I found a list of five suggested books to read this summer and
noticed something. Two were plays, two had already been made into movies and
the last one; it was about how the internet is making us dumb.
I
have in fact heard on several occasions the idea that in the age of instant
everything, including answers, we’re becoming dumber. People want instant
answers, knowledge, information, satisfaction. It’s becoming an epidemic of a
total lack of patience.
Why
wait to learn reading, writing, math, when the answers are right at your
fingertips on the internet. Why bother to even retain any facts because you can
just look it up again online.
When
I was in school they at least attempted to teach us how to convert from our
system of measuring to the metric system and back again. Who even remembers any
of that? Just look up a conversion chart online.
My
sister has a book with a perpetual calendar in it, but why bother looking
things up in that. Just find the chart online. Let the computer algorithm find
the date information you need in a matter of seconds.
Nowadays
there is an app for just about everything, even finding trivia.
The
problem with all this is it does make us dumber. We stop reading the books. We
stop retaining information. We stop learning.
In
Ally Condie’s “Matched” dystopia series she creates a world where people are so
dependent on the information on the internet that they can’t even write. They
don’t even know how to form letters. They don’t compose so much as a note
without plagiarizing from what they find online. They literally just copy and
paste words and phrases into the order they want to use. When the leading lady
learns to actually write her own name, it’s a new thing to her.
You
would think something like this was farfetched, but in this day and age, it
really isn’t. We are really almost there.
Today’s
kids have little time for patience.
They
don’t understand waiting for anything, least of all information.
They’ve
never had to wait for the slow churn of an ice cream machine to enjoy that cool
confection.
They’ve
never had to entertain themselves for an entire long, hot summer day with
nothing but a park, and maybe a swimming pool, or a bike.
They’ve
never had to get themselves across town without a parent to drive them, so it
was either hoof it or bike it. No matter how long it took.
This
Pokémon Go craze was intended to get people out and walking around, but there
is apparently ways to get around that. My boys are playing it. My son has
figured out how to convince the app he’s gone places like France, Britain, Brazil
and Seattle. All yesterday, while sitting in his bed on his computer.
Kids
want instant gratification without the effort to earn it.
Personally,
I hope that being a reader thing includes reading WIP’s, because I don’t get a
lot of time to actually read books nowadays between writing and you know, that
busy mom thing I do every day.
I
think we need to do better teaching that patience is a virtue and anything
worth having is worth working for.
Maybe
we need to turn off the tech more. (I say as I type on my computer with five
internet tabs open.)
Smile.
Make the day a brighter day.
