Mac 1 My Mac Tiffany Overby 29 August 2011 English 090 FJL04 Are We New Bibliophobes In his recent book The Dumbest Generation Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein who has worked as a director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts has argued that in recent decades the young generation has more technological access to news and information than earlier generations however instead of enlarging their knowledge this digital innovation has unintentionally weakened their developmental aptitude In particular in the article The New Bibliophobes Bauerlein indicates his claim that the young generation individually the under 30 generation rarely reads books In recent years the problem has spread and taken new directions said Beuerlein He starts by recalling the conversation he had with a high school student who eagerly broadcasted her disregard for reading throughout southern Ohio while he did a radio interview with National Public Radio that discussed leisure reading habits of teenagers and twenty years old She suffered no shame for her anti literacy taste and no cognizance of its poverty said Bauerlein Besides he also reports that after fifteen minutes of the interview he was awed by the way the listening audiences reacted with lots of data throw in Furthermore he describes that this new attitude of disinterest of books and reading is considered a literacy knowing how to read but choosing not to as a new bibliophobe He also offers another example of a college panelist whose dad is still into the whole book thing but he has not rented a book for a long time and only goes to the library to check out course books Bauerlein goes on with numerous surveys and research to Mac 2 support his claim that the reading habits of young people have unexpectedly changed in a negative way According to recent surveys for book reading of any kind the percentage of eighteen to twenty four years old who read has significantly decreased from 1992 to 2002 In addition the percentage of seventeen years old who seldom read for fun more than doubled from 1984 to 2004 There are more surveys that interpret the same pessimistic situation In the following he goes on with various studies to convey his point of view that nowadays young people do more technological actions which he considers as diversions instead of reading TV laptop iPhone video game have inevitably taken place of leisure reading Reports have charted that teens text approximately 2270 messages per month and television time remains high These observations lead to a contention that students are not learning the basic skill needed to succeed because they take a lot of advantages of which digital world has offered them However as Bauerlein goes on the discussion switches to a different view This viewpoint indicates that even though the young generation is no longer reading books they are learning in different ways Kids don t read books but they read other things they don t know much history but they know other kinds said Bauerlein Nevertheless Bauerlein quickly points out that even though the digital habits have spread rapidly it has insidious effects on young people s developmental ability The chapter concludes that after all the arguments there is no more specific evidence to prove that digital habits have taken over control of leisure reading After considering critically those arguments I personally think this author should not have such a negative perspective on the young generation and their futures It seems in this chapter that the author is trying to inform us that people under thirty who are considered as the new bibliophobes do not read any more because the digital world has kind of changed their leisure reading habits Even though I am absolutely not a new bibliophobe I totally disagree Mac 3 with his thinking in all or nothing term Indeed his opinions ignore individual differences claiming that all members of a group in this specific case the under 30 people are exactly alike This is obviously not a critical thinking On one side there is no doubt that reading has been considered a reliable source of learning and gaining knowledge among people of all ages Besides I have to admit that I agree with the author s claim that the technological devices have effects on people s reading habits Bauerlein s article reminds me how we lost ourselves to a lot of unnecessary activities However on the other side his all or nothing conclusion makes me feel pretty disappointed I am twenty years old and I love reading Even though I hardly find time to read during school days I am still not giving up reading because besides spending time with my family reading is the only time I enjoy To tell the truth in the last three weeks of summer I read six books in total including fiction and nonfiction books Also my ten year old cousin is definitely into the whole book thing Every time I drive her to the library she checks out about ten or twelve young adult books and she finishes them within a few weeks In my opinion every generation looks at and learns thing differently Kids are still reading but they are doing it differently these days whether it is with a magazines or an e book By all means what is the disparity between reading on a computer and a book For some aspects technology should be used to benefit ourselves It is undeniable that nowadays young generation has learned a majority of knowledge from the digital world which is called e literacy Reading is a great leisure activity and the computers and other digital machines like the Kindle make reading easier For those people who agree with the author s viewpoint after all these arguments about changes in reading habits and learning in digital world I critically think that people under thirty like us are definitely not the dumbest generation just because we learn and comprehend things in different ways