Viewing Response 3 Digital Nation

In this PBS documentary “Digital Nation” by Douglas Rushkoff and Rachel Dretzin they explored how students are affected by the technology available to us today, both the negatives and the positives. Most all students today are constantly multi tasking if they realize if or not, as a result on Stanford campus Professor Clifford Naas conducted a brain study on students that are chronically multi tasking. At the end of the study Naas found that multitasking creates a “distracted, disorganized memory.” Naas reports that “We are worried it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.” He talks about how the brain is really able to only do one thing at a time, it’s not made for doing multiple tasks at once. In South Korea kids are addicted to technology more then ever; Douglas Rushkoff and Rachel Dretzin visited there to see really how technology is affecting these kids. Rushkoff went to visit an ‘internet café’ were kids can spend countless hours in front of the computers playing video games. People have actually died in these internet cafes from lack of food and water. This is so shocking I never thought kids were that crazed about video games, it’s so sad because they are actually wasting their lives away. This has become such a huge crisis in Korea that the government had to set up an ‘internet rescue camp’ for kids that are virtually addicted to the internet. On the brighter side, Jason Levy a Middle School Principal in South Bronks says in his school “9 percent of students are meeting state standards in math.” When levy took over he decided that something needed to change and fast. He wanted to have all the students be accessible to technology so he had it so all the students with lap tops do their homework online, from making this change the test scores in all subjects increased dramatically. Sherri Turkle a professor at Stanford believes that “technology is not good or bad, it’s powerful.” That is how I feel also; technology can help us in so many ways as long as people use it responsibly.

I try to make my self believe that I don’t rely on technology and all that, but when I am without it reminds me how much I really do. I feel that often I distract myself from important things when I am using technology. For example if I’m trying to do my math homework and it gets boring, I decide I would rather do something else like listen to music or text. Although anything can distract people, I believe technology is the most distracting. By watching this documentary and reading these articles, imagining technology in the future makes me uneasy. From the kids in Korea becoming so addicted to it now, what will happen later on when video games become even more popular and violent. It definitely makes me worry but I know that people will do amazing things with it as well.