Is this the dumbest generation?

Is the revolution in texting, facebook and twitter making young people dumb? Do they need to get back into classic media and interaction to restore their brain power?

A good friend of mine, Seth Barnes, is a smart, tech-forward guy who has worked with young people all his life recently posted on his blog, Living in a Radical World, the thesis, Facebook is killing us softly. In reviewing the book, The Dumbest Generation, Don’t Trust Anyone Under Thirty, by Mark Bauerlein, Seth echoes the author’s position that this technology is having an adverse effect on the minds of young people.

Quoting Bauerlein…

[His] thesis is that young people spend so much time on sites like Facebook that they are losing the capacity to sit quietly in a room by themselves and read a book. As a consequence, they are losing the capacity to think deeply about issues.

Seth’s own comments…

This is not a question of Facebook/Twitter/Cellphones being good or bad. They are wonderful communication tools. It’s a question of “do you over-use them, and does that shape the way you think?” Because I love young people, I’m concerned about this phenomenon.

Seth received 25 passionate comments on both sides of the issue.

A pastor, Dan Waits, who also works with young people, had some good points of disagreement…

I find all this talk about facebook to be more than just a bit alarmist in nature… spoken whenever something new is introduced into our psyche, culture, & way of doing things.

I’m a 20something pastor that uses Facebook & texting as a major communication tool for our ministry… Facebook / texting is a significant component in the building of our sense of community… setting up meeting times for supper, coffee, or hanging, or just for finding out how everyone is doing.

I don’t think that Facebook/text messaging shorthand has corrupted people’s writing skills anymore than anything else in our culture. I was full time in music ministry for 30 years. Young adult writing skills were always pretty lame during that whole time, long before Facebook & texting were ever thought of.

more at Seth’s blog post…

So the question is whether this medium is dumbing people down, or does every generation viewed the next as dumber? I tend to agree with Dan, that it’s not harming kids. What do you think?

Yes, if you use facebook.

That makes just about everyone, especially if you use the facebook wall, post tweets or write a blog (I admit, I do all three).

Lifecasting is defined by wikipedia as the continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media. People capture daily routines and provide interactive communication with their audience.

Is it really just a compulsion?

USA Today has an excellent article, The popularity of Twitter has some relationships in a twist.

The fight between pop-music couple Rihanna and Chris Brown started because, according to the police report, she saw a text message from another woman on his cellphone and got upset.

For Justine Ezarik, 25, lifecasting has become a great opportunity. She is a real pro at this, currently ranked #27 in the all time list of twitter followers as reported by twitterholic. That puts her at just over 423,000 followers. Her bio: New media chick and Apple fan girl. I make funny videos and blog about everything from technology to pop culture. She posts commentary, which is mostly all about… her. But it’s entertaining and to her credit, tasteful. She is smart and has talent. Back to the USA Today article…

But even iJustine is getting fed up with Twitter twits. “You realize you might be with a person but they’re completely thinking something else — and they’re Twittering it,” she says. “My sister came to visit me and she would not get off the phone, she was constantly texting. I was, what are you doing? I never see you, can you just put down the phone?!“

Explore Justine’s online world and you will see lifecasting done right. This girl has talent, not just in front of the camera, but as a producer and writer and marketing maven. She has several sites from her Tasty Blog Snack at  iJustine.com to her own channel on youtube.com. If you want to join the minions who follow, including me, her twitter name is iJustine.

…iJustine, for instance, has learned her lesson: She stopped the live streaming of her life 24/7 online (yes, she wore a camera on her head) because it was upsetting her friends and business partners. Her best friend moved out…

Well, at the time, it probably seemed like a good idea.