Is the youth of today truely smarter than past generations? One would think that, with all the advanced technology and more effective ways of doing things, that would be the case. But is it really true? No, all its really done is made the youth a bit more lazy and made to think that everything in life is a bit more easy because of all the technologically based things that make work just a little easier. Because the youth of today have technology that practically does the work for them, they take many things for granted. Like books, for example, you don't see very many kids reading bookss anymore, not even for reports. If you ask a student where he or she gets their information for school reports most will say they get it from the internet.
The youth has forgotten all about books and I believe this is one the main reasons why most students are across the country are not fully prepared for college. Reading is a vidal learing instrument for the education of a student. It enables students to become educated in different cultures, religions, and diverse ways of life in different countries. It also expands a students vocabulary by seeing how the words are used and spelled and that way students can actually understand the meaning of words instead of just using them without knowing the meaning. In my opinion, books are a great intellectual stimulus that is not being used as much as it used to and therefore is causing our youth to have a less broader intellect than can be obtained, if only they should read more. That's my perspective on the youth of today and their intellectual abilities.
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Technology has increased students ability to obtain information. You can achieve the same level of academic integrity and purpose if only you know what sources to use. I would agree that technology can be difficult to use to locate information if you don't know how to use it effectively. There are many academic sites that have full book collections and links to a plethora of newspaper and periodicals. Some people otherwise wouldn't have access to these wide variety of souces. I think the true key lies in recognizing that people must be educated on how to locate information and disseminate accordingly. Are we smarter? I'd also have to agree that no the youth of today is not smarter. But it could be caused by adolescents willingness to accept biased information from non-academic sites (peoples private sites, political groups sites, news sites, etc) and take it as fact.
You cannot obtain the same information through the internet that you can get from a book. Much of the information that is submitted on the web is not plausible or factual and most of the time, it is merly someone's opinion and nothing more. I'm not saying that finding out about different perspectives is not an educational experience in itself, but you can never gain as much insight like when you are reading it from a book.
The internet is not all bad. It's true a lot of information is not factual but look at the online resources for full-text book. Since some people can't afford to buy books or for some reason can't go to the library, the internet is a neat tool and it's useful to do something other than idle around. But the problem is all of these little distractions like Myspace. You tempt kids with the option to do something entertaining rather than educational and what will most use? That seems to be the problem with the way modern people are utilizing technology. The internet was initially created for calculation, then sharing info, etc. but now we have email, chatrooms...instead of creating things for human progress and blah we use them for idle leisure. I think it's the people in question that's the problem, not the technology. It's the way it's used.