According To Kant's What Is Enlightenment?

Every day the world changes a little more, words that could be freely said 100 years ago can no longer be shouted out without the fear of judgment or worse. Without enlightenment, hardly anyone would know the current proper terms and actions of this generation. What is Enlightenment? Anyone could go to Google and search the dictionary definition of enlightenment or the word enlighten, and they may find something that goes a little like this; "To give knowledge or understanding to someone: to explain something to someone." This definition could seem simple, it could mean something as small as that enlightenment is explaining to a child why thunderstorms happen. While yes, this too is a form of enlightenment; I believe it goes incredibly deeper than that.

Immanuel Kant writes in his work titled "What is Enlightenment?", "Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage.

Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another." Self-incurred tutelage is not due to what could be considered ignorance, but more so a person's lack of motivation and bravery to attempt to use their own mind instead of being told by another. Kant writes "If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay – others will easily undertake the irksome work for me." I believe this rises an important question in reader's mind. Does our generation today truly know how to think for themselves? Not only does it widely appear that this generation struggle with this, but as well as generations past.

(2)
In generations past, our elders struggled with the issue of freedom. They were taught and told everything from birth by their parents and guardians. Children and adolescents have grown up under the influence and enlightenment of their parental role figures, up until they could instruct and teach their own children the way of life. I believe to an extent that guardian figures restrain their descendant's minds. Adolescents are too often taught they are not capable of thinking for themselves; causing the idea of freedom to be illuminated. Although guardians play a large role in their children's life; their goal should not be to brainwash their child into their way of thinking and life. It's easy to blame the guardian figures for teaching a young person things, but they are not the only ones to blame.
Society is very much as well to blame for "brainwashing" young people today. Young teens are taught by the villain that is society that they must dress, walk, and talk a certain way or they will face unfortunate consequences. Social media sites are extremely at fault for influencing young teens and adults in a negative form. While these websites are often majoritively for fun interaction with others; they can also lead to young people feeling the need to only believe what others are saying. In this generation, a large majority of young teens follow the enlightenment of others through society and social media sites, that they do not learn to think for themselves. They live in fear that if they attempt to have their own set of mind, they may be forced into horrific bullying led by others; often on social media sites.
A study was conducted on the "Health Effects of Media on Children and Adolescents", it was found that young people spend over seven hours plus on media networks. It was stated in the article that the majority of young people today "have access to a bedroom television, computer, the Internet, a video-game console, and a cell phone." Spending this large of amount of time on social networks, can easily cause any young person to vulnerably fall into the brainwashing that these sites cause. Children as young as one or two years old are seen today with iPads, tablets, and other technological devices. Exposure to these devices downloaded with social games and possibly even networks, at this young of an age, could easily cause the young child to grown and learn to listen to others' way of thought instead of learning to think for themselves. (1)
At the time Kant wrote "What is Enlightenment?” a few may have balantly agreed to his point of view saying that people have been enlightened only by their elders or authority figures. If Kant were to look at today's generation, I feel he would have more than double the amount of words on this topic as it becomes a growing issue through more than just authority figures. It is a universal issue at which the coming generations may fall worse to this fate as technology becomes more prominent and the youth of that generation may become unfortunately more brainwashed. We can only hope that future generations may learn to think for themselves, possibly changing the world.