How The “Digital Nation” Effects My Life
After watching the the video “Digital Nation” produced by Rachel Dretzin, I have become more educated and aware of this digital, technological world that we live in today. In her video, Dretzin discusses the ever-growing popularity with various new technologies and how it is effecting the world as a society. She discusses how increased usage in computers, internet, cell phones, video games, and other technologies are effecting us all, good and bad. Dretzin visits very different populations of people to see how technology effects their lives. Some of the people in this groups include MIT students, South Koreans addicted to video games, schools embracing radical teaching ideas with technology in mind, and some of the world's self proclaimed “best multi taskers”. Dretzin also speaks with people who live most of their lives in an online fantasy world and army recruiters who use video games to recruit young people today. Through just standard claims to studies at prestigious schools such as Stanford and MIT, Dretzin comes to the conclusion that technology is changing everyone, not necessarily for good, but not for bad either.
MIT professors as well as many school teachers across the country have found that students are much more different today as they were in the past. Today, students need more stimulation to make something interesting enough to pay attentions to. Students today are also multi taskers. A Stanford study by Clifford Nast found that although multi taskers feel as if they are brilliant at multitasking, really all they do is do the tasks less efficient and through as they would if they were doing one task at a time. Today, digital media supports the habit of short attention spans. Several students admitted to writing in paragraphs, stopping, doing something else, then completing the paper later. This being said, “distraction is not a new phenomenon” and has been a problem throughout centuries, as well as for centuries to come. On average students spend more than 50 hours a week with digital media (Kias). Although another study at Stanford has shown that more brain activity when using internet sources such as Google versus reading text in a book, this is not always a good thing. For instance, although our brain is working harder to find something on Google rather than reading a book, so called Googling something is not a first nature skill we have such as reading.
I defiantly feel that my life has changed because of the internet. Like Dretzin claims, to me the internet hasn't changed my life for the good but not necessarily the bad either. For instance, I can defiantly relate to the self proclaimed multi taskers from MIT as well as everywhere around the world. Yes, this means I am claiming and confessing that I am one of the self proclaimed multi taskers. I'll even admit to doing it right now. As I am typing I am also listening to Taylor Swift, texting two of my friends, replying to Facebook messages every so often, looking back at notes and the prompt, checking my word count, thinking about what I have to do this week, talking to my mom, and, well, the list goes on. Does this mean I am failing at doing everything to the full potential I could? Stanford Professor Clifford Nass would say, “Multitasking could be essentially dumbing down the world”. Personally, I couldn't really answer that question. Perhaps it does. Its a very probable possibility that in despite of getting everything done at once in an efficient manner is effecting the quality of those tasks. On the flip side, if I sat down and did each of those things separately they could probably be more through, well though out, and just better quality Assistant professor at MIT, David Jones believes that “It's not that the students are dumb, it's not that they're not trying, I think they're trying in a way that's not as effective as it could be because they're distracted by everything else”. The problem is I would never have enough time in a day to do all of those things as a separate task. There is only 24 hours in each day. So to me, multitasking is the only answer to get anything done regardless of if it is making me have a shorter attention span, not do things as well as I possibly could, and bounce back and forth between subjects, it is the only way I can get everything done.
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