Lydee Striplin

09/16/2020

ENC 4404

Is Society Dumbing Down?

Last month, the British Library issued a report on the research habits and information literacy of

the Google Generation called Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future. The

research begs the question, is society dumbing down? The study examines various myths about

teenagers and undergraduates to examine if there has been a change in the way that young people

approach research and to see if they have different communication strategies and information

literacies than older people as a result of the internet.

Over the course of the study, they used a number of different methods including comparisons

between teenagers and older internet users, observations from current activities of teenagers, and

historic accounts of information behavior from teenagers. They found that college students are

using the library less since they first began using the internet to do research. Another cause for

concern, they found that over 60 percent of e-journal readers won’t view more than three pages.

However, the study also shows that new forms of reading are emerging as users ‘power browse’

through abstracts and titles rather than reading the whole paper, going for the quick win over the

thorough study. Some, like Steven Johnson, find the research to be heavily biased and a result of

technological opposition. He argues that creative new forms of reading are being developed

online. People aren’t reading less they’re just reading differently.

If we go further into the study, we find that information literacy has not improved among young

people. They have a poorer understanding of their information needs than their older

counterparts and they show a strong tendency towards shallow, flicking behavior in the library.

Power browsing is becoming the new norm, and if it continues that way it could mean a huge

shift for everyone from students to libraries to publishers. Businesses and educators will need to

adapt to the new way of obtaining information.