The Matter With Kids Today Amy Goldwasser Summary

The purpose of this news article was to bring light to a topic that adults and non-millennials probably would not comprehend and or understand otherwise about the current generation and what they gravitate towards. Examples of this could be an elderly parent or grandparent wondering why their child/grandchild loves social media so much or a young person being curious of which app they use the most. The article is mostly focused around college and high school students. The research study further goes on to explain why this trend is happening through questions, graphs, and exact numbers. It goes on

The article “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” written by Amy Goldwasser and published on Friday, March 14, 2008 is an article about how the internet influences a teenagers choices and lifestyle. Goldwasser stated that some teenagers never knew what role Adolf Hitler had in history. She also stated that teenagers have complete control over what becomes popular from mentioning it on social media. Lastly, adults in this generation should start to accept teenagers using the internet, because it is not necessarily a bad thing for them to be exposed to.

At every turn there are talks about millennials. Whether it be a meme on the internet mocking them or a serious article addressing possible issues that involve their futures. As David Brooks argues in his article, ‘It’s Not About You’, if millennials are going to be successful in life then they have to realize that not everything is about them. Brooks’ claim effectively appeals to the audience’s emotions, yet he fails to explain the logic in his argument and build his credibility. Pointing out the many problems that millennials may face as they start life on their own, Brooks elicits many emotions from his audience.

In the essay “What’s the Matter With Kids Today?,” Amy Goldwasser argues that reading and writing text online is the same, or not very different, from reading or writing text on physical paper. This premise is simply not true. Comparing reading a physical book and reading on an E-Reader or on the Internet suggests that they use the same cognitive functions. The lighting on the computer changes the cognitive focus of the brain, as well as brain activation, reading speed, comprehension, and the contextual enviornment of the source material1.

Millennials have dominated the use of technology and social media over the years to a point where it is not even debatable. According to a report on adweek, the millennial generation has used smartphones over 70% in the bathroom and over 50% at the dinner table with their respective families. However, some would argue that generational separation is still apparent in today's modern day America. Beth Mcmurtrie, a senior writer of The Chronicle, considers that the young students of today can be deemed as too sensitive and conservative concerning the arguments that are found offensive. In the article, “A Free Speech Divide’’ she argues that the students often need attention and protection is discussed in the topic of conversation. Looking

“I have studies! I have statistics!” (par. 20) claims Joel Stein, a regular contributor for the TIME magazine. In “The New Greatest Generation: Why Millennials Will Save Us All,” Stein writes about the millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000. Using a very clever gimmick, he points out the unfavorable features of millennials at the beginning of his article, just to create a stronger rebuttal afterwards. He claims that the “millennials’ self-involvement is more a continuation of a trend than a revolutionary break from previous generations… [and] they’ve just mutated to adapt to their environment” (Stein par. 14). By utilizing rhetorical devices and various writing approaches, Joel Stein attempts to persuade the older generations to reconsider their opinion of millennials and presents his claim that the millennials inherited their characteristics from previous generations and have adapted to their environment.

“iPad babies,” “snowflakes,” “millennial humor,” and other popular internet slang regarding the difference between generations has made a rapid comeback on many different social media platforms. The inability to understand the different upbringings regarding each generation due to our society’s rapid technological advancements is the leading factor behind the vastly different ways each generation perceives things, thus the gap between people in different age groups. As society progresses, we find this “gap” widening due to the indulgence of electronics in our younger generation and this notion of needing to fit in, whereas individuality was more prominent in the past. Almost resembling Huxley’s prophecy for the future in “Brave New World,” where people are portrayed as mindless minions who indulge themselves in whatever

Amy Goldwasser in her article “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” believes our fear of technology should be disregarded and that technology actually makes kids into reporters and documentarians. Goldwasser calls on parents of teenagers to allow their children to be exposed to some technology because it can influence them to write and witness the importance of speech. The first rhetoric device Goldwasser uses is a rhetorical question: “So much so that we can’t see that the Internet is only a means of communication, and one that has created a generation, perhaps the first, of writers, activists, storytellers?” (Goldwasser). The author highlights the simplicity of the Internet so that it does not sound as dangerous as it is made out to be.

As generations go by, our predecessors assume we are skipping out on important aspects of life just to get a few extra minutes on our devices. In Catherine Rampell’s “A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much”, it is said the older generations believe Generation Y is “coddled, disrespectful, narcissistic, and impatient” (Rampell 388). In all reality our generation is just doing what it has to in order to thrive in the world we live in, where technology is one of the largest parts of our everyday lives. If the older generations that criticize Generation Y had grown up in Generation Y they would realize the world we live in requires the use of technology. The advancement of society with technology has shaped Generation Y to be the people that they are, relying on technology; however, older generations believe Generation Y is lazy.

In the article, “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” Amy Goldwasser, a well-renowned author of young adult books, argues against the survey, which was conducted by the research organization named Common Core and released on February 26. Goldwasser is expressing the argument that she heard so many times when she was a teenager: the kids are using the phones and do not focus on their books because they are so busy with computers, iPod’s, that they do not know what is going on around them. Goldwasser presents her idea that she heard in current times that this technology is not harmful to the youngsters only adult people believe it is. Technology is expanding and is more available to the teenagers.

According to the article “What’s the Matter with the Kids Today”, many adults believe that new technology is consuming the minds of young people. Amy Goldwasser uses research from Common Core surveys as well as Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech to create her argument. Goldwasser uses these examples to explain that if parents and teachers better understood the use of technology, students wouldn’t be punished for their overuse of technology today.

In Amy Goldwasser’s article “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” she talks about how kids now of days don’t read, don’t write, and don’t care about anything besides their phones, tables, and other technologies. She is trying to explain why younger and older generations may not both be affected by internet and how it has actually helped one of these generations more than the other. This article argues if technology is affecting younger and older generations. One writer says “the internet has seduced a whole generation into its inanities”, but Amy Goldwasser thinks it’s helping the younger generation and affecting the older generation. She quotes in response to this writer “or is it the older generation that the internet has seduced into the inanities of leveling charges based on fear,

In the essay “What’s the Matter with Kids?” Amy Goldwasser addresses that the internet should be another educational tool to make the newer generation succeed their limits in our society. She first states that Common Core, National Endowment for the Arts, and a Nobel Prize winner think that young people today are weak in knowledge of history and literature. The reason they believe that is because the internet stores young people’s trivia. Goldwasser offers insight that the older generation is not expecting that the internet is just a medium and that the generation is afraid that kids know things they don’t.

White, Wyn and Robards (2017) refer to a generational approach of understanding how each generation of young people engage with their circumstances providing a framework for understanding youth culture as an expression of generational preoccupations and dispositions and engagement with new communications technologies. Online social networks have become embedded within most young people's everyday lives (Green & Hannon, 2007). When looking at

Technology has been involved in people’s lives forever, especially in the Millennial Generation. This generation consists of individuals born between the years of 1982-2004. The articles “The Flight From Conversation,” “Teens and Technology 2013,” and “Leading The Charge For Change” deals with teens interacting with technology today.Each article has different topics, but they connect through the over dependence of teens to technology. The Millennial Generation becomes less and less in touch with the real world and morphs into a quasi-reality.