It appears to me that everyone needs a scapegoat for everything.
Firstly, there has always been, and probably always will be, a portion of kids who don't do well in school, who don't care, and who go against the grain. The fact that some 47 percent of "heavy media users" get C grades proves nothing. For one, all teenagers use these types of media, which dampens the point, and secondly, I don't see the correlation between bad grades and media use. I'm going to make an assumption that kids who make bad grades probably don't spend a lot of time studying, so why not take advantage of the wealth of media available during their free time? The texting capabilities and facebook do not make children have bad grades. They give kids who aren't focused on more important things something to do.
Secondly, technology is not something to be feared and used as an excuse for children who can't get their act together (if you want to blame someone, I say look towards those who raised the child, peers, etc). Technology is the advancement of our future. We are breeding a generation of super computer competent citizens. Some people see this as a bad thing, foreseeing some catastrophe where all of the worlds citizens become apathetic video gamers.
Simply put, and for a lack of better words, I say this is a big deal for nothing. Yes kids use media, but which kid doesn't?
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Some good points, Trevor, and you're right to question causation (correlation does not necessarily indicate causation). But be careful not to simply dismiss real statistics that you aren't happy with. The word "heavy" is important in the phrase "heavy media users," and that is what is being correlated with C grades. So yes, pretty much all American kids use new media technologies, but maybe what this article is saying is that the ones who spend a greater-than-average amount of time on it are the ones whose grades are suffering.
ReplyDeleteYeah?