My response for the book “The Dumbest Generation” is that I don’t think we are dumb. I think it’s just that all the new technology and our use of it, seems to make us dumb. He has a good point though, our test scores are low but I don’t think that he should be calling us The Dumbest Generation. My three topics are Social Media, Drugs and Reading.

A LOT of things have changed since the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. There is a lot more social media. Myspace and facebook were introduced to us-over 27 million members! People read, even those in the younger generation, some of us just prefer to do it online. Today’s young generation of consumers isn’t bothering to read “offline media”. I think we are all a bunch of social media addicts. We’re junkies. Whether it’s a new facebook feature or a new social anything service, we are all over it. I think that the Social Media controls our lives and we are so wrapped up in it that we don’t bother to read. We just focus on more “important” things like which celebrity is dating who, who’s wearing what and how many friends we have on myspace.

I think that drugs and alcohol may have some part in why we don’t read as much. Kids and teens try drugs to fit in with a group of friends. Some use illegal drugs for many reasons, often because they help you escape from reality. More and more are available out there and kids/teens do have a way of getting them. There is so much going on in high school that some teens don’t have enough time to read (besides in the classroom) like teen athletes. There are sports all year round. Some kids use performance enhancing substances such as steroids, stimulants and HGH. Guys and some girls think the bigger the better, screw reading in their minds. Everyday 2500 teens use a prescription drug to get high. Doing drugs affects whoever uses them, and can change the person dramatically and affect them school wise.

In the chapter I read, it said that kids read Harry Potter not because they like it but because other kids read it. I totally disagree with that because after watching the movies, I read the books. Not because other people did, I read it in my spare time. Our knowledge is running to zero in areas of civics, history, ECT, while rising to a panoramic grasp of lives of Celebes, lyrics of pop music and myspace profiling.

Overall I don’t think that we are The Dumbest Generation, but he does have a good point that we should be doing something different and spend our time more wisely. I thank Mark Bauerlein for writing this book because he has opened teen’s eyes to see what we are doing wrong and what we could change to help out our lives and the people around us.