Plugging In, Tuning Out

That's the title of a disturbing article by Don Campbell in today's USA Today.

Don teaches journalism at Emory University in Atlanta.He not only gives his take, but quotes from two books on the state of learning, today. You can guess what the focus of his article is just by the title of one of the books, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future.

The books author, Mark Bauerlein, admits the title is a "little bit over the top," but don't let that put you off.

The call to action is to get off your self absorbed social sites that blocks out virtually everything else, learn how to really write (not text-message-writing) and use your brain instead of your fingertips.

Campbell quotes a Midwestern high school student who gave this response on why social networking held such an attraction for her.

"It sounds stupid and everything but like once you get into it it's really like addicting -- just like everything. Like you have your song and like you write like all this stuff about yourself and like all my friends basically have it. So like we always like read each other's pages and like call each other and like kind of, and like you put like 300 pictures up so .. people's pictures and stuff and comments."

Campbell writes, "Sounds stupid? Why in the world would she think that."

My take is that after thirteen "likes", like I am really sad. Really, really sad.