According to Sharon Begley, “IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930’s.” Those under the age of thirty have grown up in a generation where technology is vast, resources are bounteous, and the ability to efficiently utilize technology to benefit their lives is easily obtainable. In the modern era, it does not so much matter how much you know and are able to enlighten, but rather how much you can obtain from resources that are provided. Those under the age of thirty are not dumb; they are enclosed by a world that allows them to attain necessary information when needed, so they can save room to focus on the ability to think critically and logically while leaving the factual information to technology.
“This generations ignorance of facts (or of facts that older people think are important) reflects not dumbness but choice.” (Begley) By choice, this generation does not value factual information until it is needed, but that is because they access the information as it is necessary. Saying that those under the age of thirty are dumb is like trying to call a laptop computer, or even Google, dumb. Those under the age of thirty, those who are considered “dumb”, are truly the ones that have the capabilities to access knowledge with just the click of a button. It is no longer necessary to know whom the author of the oratorio “Messiah” is because it can easily be researched, meaning that if you could not answer that by memory, you are not considered dumb. (Begley) Those under thirty may be separated from factual history, but they can easily incline themselves in any time period due to infinite technology.
Spending a lot of time immersed in technology does not deter our le...
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...ything educational is steadily increasing in a positive way. Those under the age of thirty now write in class assignments as well as “life writing” due to social media and technology in general.
Those under the age of thirty are not dumb, they may not be intelligent either, but they are apart of a generation that provides them with unlimited resources in order to be immersed with knowledge. The younger generation had no other choice but to grow up in a world where technology was at their fingertips. How someone uses technology is a choice that they have the freedom to make. Technology is a beautiful thing, not something that has the power to make those under the age of thirty “dumb.”
Works Cited
Shea, Renée Hausmann, Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Dissin Aufses. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin, 2013. Print.
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