Like a plague sweeping the nation, digital media in every form has infected a great majority of the population. Facebook, Video Games, You Tube and many others have been known to take up most of our generation and now older ones have embraced this digital media into their lives. The controversy surrounding this epidemic is whether or not it has made our society stronger or weaker. In “Digital Nation” director Rachel Dretzin shows us the many sides of digital media, from young to old, from someone that just passes the time to someone that is considered addicted to video games. One similarity that we can see in today’s youth is the ability to multitask, we see people on their phones, checking their email and studying at the same time. In California at the Stanford University they put on the first study of brain activity and multitasking to the test. In the study professor Clifford Nass found that “multi-tasker’s are terrible at every aspect of multitasking” and they are worried that “it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly”. This made me stop and think about myself for a second, am I a victim of this multi-tasking thought process?


Although I agree that it was wonderful that we have more opportunities to be creative and to meet more people I insist that multitasking can’t fully allow deep thinking and I can see it in my own life. While I am typing a paper or trying to concentrate on something, I feel myself wanting to go do something else. I can still remember getting on a computer for the first time when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Thinking it was the best thing that could have ever happened to the world, writing to people in another country that I would have no opportunity to talk to elsewhere. Soon my family got a computer of their own and they would ask me a 10 year old how to do certain tasks on it. We were raised in this digital era, and our brains rewired to it. We no longer have the need to remember dates and quotes alike, we simply look them up on Google. On the other hand is there really need to remember these things in the first place? Of course it allows me to become more constructive and to do more in a short period of time, but do I retain any of this. Is my multi-tasking causing me to push out this “useless” information? I find myself in this very moment watching “Digital Nation” while typing this paper and frequently checking my phone to see what time it is or thinking about the list of things I have to do today. I can see it in my roommates as well, during the writing process they may take a break to play the PS3 or to show me something they found on youtube, or facebook. Whether you believe that is for the best or for the worse, we can all agree that is changing the way we view the world in a very significant way.