Our time is dominated by graphic entertainments such as television, video games, the internet, and more. Many people today are disgusted by today’s popular culture and generally have a negative attitude about it. People today believe it is making us much dumber. They discredit it for what it is actually does according to Steven Johnson in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You. He proposes a total opposite point of view and that we underrate modern pictoric entertainment and media. The main premise of the book Everything Bad Is Good For You is that today’s pop culture is actually making us smarter and has grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past few years. Steve Johnson proves this argument by discussing how video games aren’t as bad as they seem, television is much more complex than you think and making us smarter, and he tells how the internet helps us interpret our current world and that these three sources of media are increasing our average IQ.
Steve
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Johnson states that “It’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re playing, it’s the way you’re thinking that matters.”(40) One common misconception about gaming is that it may increase hand eye coordination but that’s it. It is much more than that. Games do something that music, movies, and books don’t. Games demand you to make decisions. They make you have to prioritize which directly immerses the brain’s decision making. This leads to video games teaching you to make better decisions and as Steve expresses it, “You literally learn by playing.” (42). Kids aren’t completely wasting their time while playing games. They are actually learning. There is a lot of thinking involved in gaming which goes unrecognized. The author breaks down a gamers’ mind to making decisions, snap judgments, and long term strategies. Games engage people to problem solve which actively making them use their brains. Games are all about learning. You have to learn the rules to the game in order to make progress. This is what the author is trying to convey. Your mind has to work in games. They are not just mindless entertainment that will eventually dumb us down but instead they improve certain mental features. Television is more passive than video games and there are some shows that allow the watcher to just sit and watch without having to do any work, but the author also feels that television is making audience use their heads to follow along and states “…popular films-have also increased the cognitive work they demand from their audience exercising the mind in ways that would have been unheard of thirty years ago.” (62) Some shows and movies require the viewer to have the deeply interwoven plotlines recognizable in their head and to be able to make sense of all the information is not always easy.
Sometimes they keep information hidden for the viewer therefore making the viewer use his head to have to fill in the blanks. These types of shows and movies are complex and make it so you have to pay attention or else it won’t make sense. These narratives are only getting more convoluted and mentally challenging. As a result, this form of media is making humans smarter every
day. Its no surprise that the average IQ has increased over the past years.
Not only educational shows accomplish these goals, but fictional television programs can often incorporate information that requires viewers to grapple with a topic using logical reasoning and a global consciousness. In addition, not to diminish the importance of reading, television reaches those who may never pick up a book or who might struggle with reading problems, enabling a broader spectrum of people to interact with cognitive topics. Veith has committed the error of making generalizations about two forms of media when, in truth, the situation varies depending on quality and content. However, what follows these statements is not just fallacious, but
Steven Johnson in “watching television makes you smarter” believes that the complexity of the shows' plots has a cognitive value, nutrition for the viewers. Dana Stevens arguments this fact by also stating that television only “teaches you to watch more television”, the complexity of the new shows help you understand how the show will turn out. However, they do not help you for real life events that the shows try to depict. In my opinion, television is just a fun thing to do occasionally to relax and get your mind off of the regular life. It can teach you some things however you should take them in consideration.
In “Cultural Illiteracy,” a preface to the novel The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein critically evaluates how technological distractions affect the younger generation. Bauerlein states that “digital diversions” are cutting the younger generation off from culturally enhancing mediums and is in turn making the younger generation less intelligent. Though Bauerlein is correct about the increase of peer pressure due to technology, he is mistaken about how technology is making the younger generation unintelligent.
Video games do not make us more intelligent. They may however, make us more prone to violence and sex. Video games are preventing us from screening out distractions and making thinking deeply a difficult task. Our brains become overwhelmed when multitasking. Moreover, Johnson states “... a modern video game can take forty hours to complete”. Forty hours keep kids from homework and as Rachael Rettner states in livescience, “The results show that boys given a PlayStation II are slower to progress in their reading and writing skills and have more learning problems reported by their teachers than those not given a system”. The sole reason studies come back positive for video games being productive is due to the fact that they test a regular video gamer with a non-gamer. Regular video gamers will do better in the study because the more they play, the better they get. Not many realize the effect of these “fully realized imaginary worlds”, it is making it harder for people to differentiate their virtual life with their real
The media has come to dominate the lives of many of today’s youths. In The Great Imagination Heist, Reynolds Price expresses extreme dismay at the media’s ever-tightening grasp over the impressionable minds of adolescents. He sincerely feels that the effects of prolonged exposure to television, film, video games, and the Internet are detrimental to the development of a youth’s imagination and ability to think freely, without outside influence. The word “heist” indicates the intention to rob or steal. Price laments what he perceives to be the robbing of original, personal thought. He longs for the days when people read books freely and television was little more than a negligible aspect of our daily lives.
It is often believed that children are better off spending more time reading books and less time zoning out in front of their video games. People claim that video games sanction and promote aggression and violent responses to conflict; and that most games are an immense waste of time. Steven Johnson, the author of “Why Games Are Good for You,” appreciates the virtues of reading books, but argues that playing video games may not be a complete waste of time. His purpose for writing this essay is to explain the impact of cybertechnology on human perception and communication, in which he defends the value of computer games. In his essay, Johnson fluctuates between the pros and cons of reading versus gaming to appeal to skeptics who believe video
He feels as if critics need to take a reality check, “When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1900’s coincided with the great American crime decline.” He feels that the advances in technology has no affect on our brain’s cognitive functions feels there is no evidence on disabling our learning capabilities. Pinker’s disposition on the positive outcome of technological advances is so profound, he feels it is even correlated with the rise in IQ”s in the modern years. He acknowledges that access to mass media is a powerful tool that can engulf one’s life. Pinker just feels that all humans have self-control and are able to put their phone down when the time is
While there is a very sound argument regarding whether or not entertainment had the capacity to ruin society. One must consider that entertainment can be interpreted differently by each individual. Entertainment, in general, can be either beneficial or detrimental to society which varies on the use of all the outlets of entertainment. Although there are negatives that are created from entertainment there are positive factors which arise from music, video games, and television.
This effects the audience in a different way it gives a more detached feeling to the people watching which they cannot connect to their own lives or relate to the characters with. The target
The author illustrates the intellectual benefits obtained from mass media and argues that the media doesn’t have a negative effect on our brain. His examples are the great American crime decline not because of new technologies like comic books, video games, television and transistor radio mainstream. The predictions that the new technologies would be harmful were wrong. Not only just the
Television has come a long way since it was first introduced. Originally, it was thought that the masses that watch television enjoyed the more simple shows that would tell you exactly what was going on from start to finish. In Steven Johnson’s article, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, Johnson argues that this is actually not the case. In fact, Johnson argues that much more people enjoy shows that involve multi threading, or multiple plots that are all connected.
The gaming industry is a leading company when it comes to entertainment, especially among young children and teens. Technology has become an enormous necessity in everyday life and many, whether young or old, always seem to have some form of it on their person at all times. It may be something as simple as car keys with an electronic lock system or even more common, the cell phone, but majority of the devices we have today have become, in a sense to some, basic necessities, objects that they cannot go a single day without. So why does everyone question why children are so glued to technology; parents provide it, encourage it, but when is it “too much?”. Then it comes down to television and video games. The vast majority of the youth of today are increasingly sucked in...
In his essay “Mind over Mass Media,” Steven Pinker proposes that media technologies are beneficial to mental development. According to Pinker, the rise of new forms of social media have been linked to the reduction in crime. He supports this claim by stating that the emergence of “video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline” (3) and that “the decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were…decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously” (3). He also mentions that new technologies have made more resources available, and in turn,...
Television has a been a medium for storytelling for a very long time and is similar to radio and film in that it gives you the best of both worlds. Where radio can give you an intense detailed story over a longer period of time and film can also give you an intense detailed story it has to do it in less time but you actually get to see what’s happening rather than just visualizing it yourself. That is why TV storytelling is so awesome because it allows you to see what is happening and also lets a story be told over a long period of time through multiple episodes. Two TV shows that prove just how amazing TV storytelling can be are Doctor Who and South Park. Doctor Who is a Sci-Fi story of The Doctor and his companions as they adventure through
When it comes to the topic of television, most of us would readily agree that watching television is a waste of time. Where the agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of “are there shows that increase our intelligence?” and what pleasure do some television show bring to us? I would say there are some great shows that increase our intelligence. Shows like “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” this kind of show puts the brain to work; thinking. There are some other shows that tend to convince us that watching television seduces our mind. I find Johnson’s argument about his article “watching television makes you smarter” confusing because he was not actually picking sides in the article and Steven’s “Thinking Outside The Idiot Box” argument about how “it’s really good at teaching you to think… about the future episode” (Steven, 296). Although I agree with the author of “Watching Television Makes you Smarter” Johnson to an extent, I cannot accept that he overlooks how much time people spends each day watching television.