Cognitive Development and The Changing Digital Landscape
When analyzing N. Katherine Hayles essay titled, Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes, I am able to better understand the relationship between cognitive styles and generational shifts. After being born in 1995, I have been able to experience academia through the teachings of older generations, which has been both beneficial and troublesome. Present day college students like myself are having a difficult time managing both deep and hyper attention. I find myself pondering what sort of barriers and challenges we run into during our educational experience. Deep attention has been the norm throughout education, so it is important to consider how the modern generational processes information today. The changing technology and media has altered the way we think, socialize, communicate, and even do business. It is interesting to consider what these aspects of life were like prior to the changing technology and media that we currently live with. Our more so hyper attentive generation is certainly a result of digital media.
As time progresses, people are constantly surrounded by change. From birth to death, we are always adapting to the changing environment around us. The past generations do not have the ability to even relate to the modern generations because of the changes in technology and media. Our current educators are predominantly from the older generations, which lead to certain expectations based from their own experiences involving deep attention. N. Katherine Hayles writes, “The evolutionary advantage of this pruning process is clear, for it bestows remarkable flexibility, giving human beings the power to adapt to widely differing environments. Although synaptogenesis is greatest in infancy, plasticity continues throughout childhood and adolescence, with some degree continuing even into adulthood. In contemporary developed societies, this plasticity implies that the brains synaptic connections are coevolving with an environment in which media consumption is a dominant factor. Children growing up in media-rich environments literally have brains wired differently from those of people who did not come tot maturity under that condition” (192). With this being said, the changing media landscape has led to a change in the brains functionality. It is very important to consider the lifestyle differences between the past generations and the current. Instead of sitting with your family listening to the radio, children today are now playing on smart phones as well as watching television. People today are constantly swarmed with information and this definitely has an impact on life in both a positive and negative way.
Has technology and digital media socialized the modern generation for better or worse? I think this question has the ability to be argued in both directions, but when relating this question to education I think it is safe to say that we are heading into a serious issue caused by our changing lifestyles. N. Katherine Hayles writes, “The survey focused on a statistically representative sampling of 2,032 people, 694 of whom were selected for more detailed study through the seven-day media diaries they were asked to keep. The results indicate that the average time young people spend with media per day is a whopping 6.5 hours — everyday of the week, including school days. Because some of this time is spent consuming more than one form of media, the average time with media in general (adding together various media sources) rises to 8,5 hours. Of this time, TV and DVD movies account for 3.51 hours; MP3, music CDs, and radio 1.44 hours; interactive media such as Web surfing 1.02 hours; video games. 49 hours. Reading brings up the rear with a mere .43 hours. The activity those of us in literary studies may take a normative –reading print books– is the media from to which our young people turn least often in their leisure time” (189). With this being said, people today are constantly being influenced and surrounded with information. We must be able to rationalize and assume how this will impact our cognitive development. This relates to my own personal life because I am one of the students who have grown up in a more hyper attentive environment. While writing this paper I could certainly listen to music, have the TV on, and even interact with friends. This is not something that I necessarily want to do, but more so have the ability to do. Our lifestyle and environment has programmed us to think in this way. Should students like myself attempt to change the way we think or is it more practical to reform the style in which our older educators teach? I really do not know the answer to this question, but certainly a solution needs to be found.
As the younger generations progress through education we run into issues when finding the common ground between deep and hyper attention. Researchers are attempting to find a model that best supports interaction and stimulation as well as corresponding with the digital media influenced lifestyles that we live today.
N. Katherine Hayles writes, “The laboratory’s archives, chronicled at Fisher’s Web site, provide a record of the various experiments (Fisher); they show the participants struggling to find appropriate configurations that will enhance rather than undermine the educational mission. One participant comments that in backchanneling, ‘The speaker function becomes more about seeding ideas and opening up discussion,’ indicating that in such an environment, lecturing is less about a one way transmission of information and more about providing a framework to which everyone contributes. Other comments suggest that the participants share responsibility for the insightfulness of the comments they post. As one participant comments, the interactive environment ‘challenges the audience to pay attention; it challenges the speak to hold attention; perhaps it pushes everyone to … interact toward a shared goal.’ While the archives give the sense that the perfect configuration has yet to emerge, they convey a lively sense of experimentation and a willingness to reconceive the educational mission so that everyone, teachers, and students, bears equal responsibility for its success” (196). With this being said, discovering new teaching techniques is certainly a mission for researchers and educators. This is a problem that needs to be resolved, but the testing of different situations and scenarios will hopefully result in a classroom dynamic that is best fitting for both the students and teachers. There is a pretty big difference regarding age and lifestyle when considering many of today’s professors and students. Certainly both hyper and deep attention have benefits, but the classroom dynamic needs to find the perfect balance of the two. It is important to consider how the brains of the modern generation function.
When thinking of digital media and technology, many great comments come to mind. We are living within an information age that past generations have never seen before. The question I keep asking myself is, does all of this simply benefit us without harm? Hyper attention has really impacted the younger members of today’s generation in comparison to the others. For many hours of the day people are involved in multiple different tasks. Imagine a student who has class, work, and a social life. All of that plus the modern day digital environment creates a very stimulated brain and individual overall. Boredom in the past resulted in someone going outside to play, while today boredom involves technology and the digital world. Our brains are now programmed to work and act in this way. I probably spend hours a day on my smart phone and I cannot even begin to consider how it affects me. N. Katherine Hayles writes, “Not without reason, then, have we been called the ADHD generation. Rumors abound that college and high school students take Ritalin, Dexedrine, and equivalent drugs to prepare for important examinations such as the SAT and GRE, finding that cortical stimulants help them concentrate. Surveys by two different research groups of medications taken in North Carolina and Virginia public schools find that Ritalin is being prescribed for children who do not fit the criteria for ADHD, with 5–7% misdiagnosed (Angold, Egger, and Costell; LeFever, Arcona, and Antonuccio). B. Vitiello speculates that the overuse of Ritalin may be because parents press for it, finding that it helps their children do better in school These results suggest that as the mean moves toward hyper attention rather than deep attention, compensatory tactics are employed to retain the benefits of deep attention though the artificial means of chemical intervention in cortical functioning” (191–192). With this being said, it seems as if our hyper attentive lifestyles are a result of the changing digital media landscape. We have become so accustom to stimulation that we now attempt to use chemicals to provide for a further energized mindset. After doing research on this topic, I find myself questioning if ADHD is real mental condition. Can we simply blame genetics or our modern day digital world?
As time progresses I can only imagine an environment that continues to grow around technology and digital media. I mentioned throughout this analysis that many aspects of life are going to change due to this. Certainly this generational shift in cognitive styles will impact education, but what else are we not considering? Society is going to have to work to find the common ground between deep and hyper attention. This is a difficult task to solve, but I believe that in the near future educational reform will occur. The strategy within the classroom will deviant away from the traditional ways of teaching. It is important to adapt to the changing surroundings just as primitive humans have done in the past.
