The final product for Johnson's book (which argues that all of the social media the millennials are ensconced in as well as the pop culture they are saturated in are making them more intelligent) is actually an option: surrender their cell phones to me for 48 hours and keep a journal of what their life is like without their phones OR write a tradition 6-8 page research paper on one of Johnson's theories.
Needless to say, everyone in the class opted for the former option.
I was interested to see if they might realize that without their phones, maybe Bauerlein has some points. Maybe they can't function in a world where they are unplugged.
Today I finally got around to grading their journals. Here are some of the things that struck me as I read through them.
Safety - these millennials seem to think that we live in inner-city Los Angeles or in a war-torn third world country. I can't tell you how many times students wrote about not having their security blanket of a cell phone or that they were worried that their car would break down and they'd be stranded. Now how often do any of those things really happen? Especially when students drive far nicer vehicles than ever before. Cell phones, though, make us think that we have to have this illusion of safety when really we don't. I mean our car could break down and we could be in an area with no reception or the batter could be dead or our parents could be gone. Then what would we do?
Are cell phones taking away our power to adapt and deal with real life?
Multi-Task - Every student wrote about this in some form. I think what this really means is multi-entertain. Students rely on their phones to stay entertained to game and text and surf the net. Are those tasks really vital? What will they do in class when they're bored? It used to be called daydreaming or doodling. Now it's called AngryBirds or surfing Wikipedia.
How much parents really rely on them - We like being able to contact our kids at any moment. I'm amazed at how often I hear adults complain about kids today and their damn cell phones, yet time and again students wrote about how their parents grew angry when they couldn't get ahold of them via their cell phones (even though the students had to inform their parents that they would be surrendering their phones for two days).
This reminds me of another of my pet peeves - adults and their phones! It's so hypocritical when baby boomers criticize the young for their dependence upon technology. Yet, I've been to two funerals and witnessed adults who had their cell phones go off. In one case, the embarrassed adult quickly put it on mute. The other case, the phone actually went off twice, with the adult unaware.
That never happens with millennials. They will actually ask me if they may go outside because they are expecting a call from their parents. Imagine that Gen Xers! Manners from the young. Who would have thought it?
Alarm clocks - apparently watch makers aren't the only companies to be reeling from the millennials disuse of their products, for every single journal noted how they were afraid they'd be late for school because they didn't own an alarm clock.
And, best of all, one student had a wonderful epiphany - they wrote about telling a story to a friend at lunch. Just when the student was getting to the good part in the story, their friend whipped out their cell phone and commenced texting right in the middle of the story. They didn't even hear a word the person said! How rude. Yet, the student had to wonder, how many times had they been guilty of the same thing?
That lone epiphany might have been worth all the misery I bestowed upon my class for 48 hours.
1 comment:
I love that you have them do that. In your comment that they think they are "safer" with a phone--Here's an article documenting a dramatic fall in traffic accidents in Dubai during the 3-day disruption of BlackBerry services and none of the accidents were fatal. Hmmm...Connection?
http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/blackberry-cuts-made-roads-safer-police-say
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