Steven Pinker Mind Over Mass Media Summary

Moral panics about technology have spreaded throughout the community about how it could affect consumers intelligence. However, those threats were exaggerated when computers and televisions were invented. Professor Steven Pinker, author of “Mind Over Mass Media,” argues that the media does not have a negative effect on consumers minds. Even though medias have controlled our minds, it is what keeps our brain at focus to take in information without losing interest.

Steven Pinker explains how technology helps people take in information without losing interest, and how consumers in the past were concerned towards the use of new electronics. He connects with the decrease of crime rates with new technologies of how radios and video games were in a decade that made IQ’s rise non stop. He also notes that if someone took the use of medias from a scientist’s perspective and if it were hazardous towards intelligence, “The quality of science would be plummeting,” Pinker mentions (1030). He argues more about media critics towards consumers experiencing new technologies, and also mentions that people have

It is relevant because we are in a generation where technology is being built around us continuously, and now we have devices to study upon in school and at work. The fear upon some critics does not rely on this since some are used of encyclopedia books in the past, rather than using the internet with wide resources from a monitor, Pinker mentions,“But such panics fail basic reality checks” (1029). He provided two perspectives from scientist’s and media critics about how people take in information. It was smart considering that whoever is reading it will want to argue which is keeping consumers mind interested in taking in new information. Rather than being uninterested and skimming through notes while not paying attention to a certain