“What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” by Amy Goldwasser

In the excerpt from Salon magazine in 2008, Amy Goldwasser examines the effect the Internet has on the learning capabilities of teenagers. By incorporating statistics from the Common Core research organization, she argues against the validity of their study’s conclusions.

Goldwasser starts out this excerpt by connecting multiple surveys/reports done by Common Core and the National Endowment of the Arts with Doris Lessing’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. These claim that the Internet is “the diminished role of voluntary reading in American life” (Goldwasser). She then contradicts these statements by saying teenagers now get their literary information online and read everything online. She also points out that because of social networking sites and texting, people are now “collaborative” with others, and “choose to write about themselves” and “appreciate the value of a good story and the power of speech that moves” (Goldwasser).

Goldwasser continues by pointing out how adults are afraid of the vast capabilities of the Internet under the fingertips of a teenager because “our kids know things we don’t” (Goldwasser). This is true. Teenagers are around new technologies such as computers and the Internet all the time, so they naturally pick up the inner workings of new technologies faster than adults. So now adults consider the Internet to be “one more thing unknowable about the American teenager” (Goldwasser). What Goldwasser is proposing here is that it doesn’t have to be. If we become more knowledgeable of how to use the Internet, adults can connect more with their children, and understand what’s going on in their lives. One can find almost anything out about the average teenager by reading their Facebook statuses, their Twitter posts, and their Tumblr blogs.

Goldwasser starts to conclude her argument by pointing out some fallacies in the survey done by common core, and how many of the results were wrong from the tests because times have changed. But she doesn’t disagree with all of the results. Instead she proposes a change in our outlook of the Internet. “Once we stop regarding the Internet as a villain, stop presenting it as the enemy of history and the literature and worldly knowledge, then our teenagers have the potential to become the next great voices of America” (Goldwasser). In contradiction to the title of the excerpt, “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?,” Goldwasser suggests that adults take a look at what’s the matter with the trust they have in their own children. She wants adults to not worry as much about their kids, and “thank the Internet for making him or her a writer and a thinker” (Goldwasser).