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Our Generation is Stupid?

Fernbutter

Murder is the way.
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I think our generation took a few wrong turns, okay maybe a lot, but still there are stills as much smart people out there are there are to dumb people. Though some very good changes would do good for this generation, or at least a guide something that will be able to get this generation on track again.
 

Melody

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No. The generation isn't stupid. It's just not showing it's best yet. It can and will improve with time, and things like text speak do have their time and place, just some people tend to over use it and this tends to annoy people.

That said, I often find myself being too verbose.
 

ANARCHit3cht

Call me Archie!
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Am I the only one amazed at how sophisticated so many people are sounding right now, either in mockery of the teacher or of the subject at hand? I'm not going to sit here and spew out complex words for the enjoyment of everyone else, because that is just narcissistic. Instead, I will say that the way a lot of the kids write, talk, and text that were born in 2000 and up is extremely shameful.
Or perhaps, people such as myself, are just naturally more inclined towards eloquence? There's hardly anything narcissistic about it. Pointing that out and alluding to the fact that you are different is what is actually narcissistic.

To leave this segue of language and going back to the OP, I doubt that our generation is any more stupid. In fact, as you mention actually it's easier than ever to learn about new things and deepen our understanding of the world. At the same time, it's easier than ever to distract yourself. Putting the question of whether our generation as a whole is getting more stupid, the two factors I've mentioned would make the difference between people's intelligence more divergent - to put it one way there's a greater spread within the population as it's easier to move on the intelligence continuum in either direction. Since we usually only notice stupid people instead of smart people, I think the differences between smart and stupid have become more visible.
Yes, but all this information brings in an issue. In an effort to learn it all, or perhaps teach it all, things are ingrained into the brain an inch deep and a mile wide. The way a good majority of schooling works in the Western world is to cram your head with as many facts as possible because those are apparently the equivalent to sophistication, curiosity, and other aspects of being intelligent.

It's easier than ever to deepen our understanding, you're right. But only if you already have that mindset. Otherwise it tends to be something like, "Why do I need to learn who our first president was? I can just google it.' or "Why do I have to learn how to factor polynomials? There's a calculator to do it online for me." or "Why do I have to learn how to spell? That's what autocorrect is for. Nt tht im gonna type all of em lettres n e way."

This article here is pretty interesting. While I wouldn't necessarily equate reaction time to intelligence as they would, they have something going with the whole processing speed thing. It's not exactly that we're getting "dumber"--we just have to make less use of our intelligence than we previously had to. As with any such structure in the body, such as muscles, if you do not use it, it grows weaker.

EDIT: That aside, this generation is most assuredly more open-minded and tolerable in many aspects. While we might not be able to understand things with the sophistication of generations before us, we will approach them with enough patience that we will have time to understand them. Therein lies a major difference. It's an entirely different school of thought, I'd say.
 
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stp

ShootThePuck
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Honestly, every kid is different. I know extremely smart kids and I know extremely dumb kids. Not necessarily dumb, but honestly, the kids of today have pathetic vocabulary. I hear people that ask the meanings of words that I knew years ago. I might sound extremely conceited, but I'm not trying to be. I'm no grammar expert myself but I think I have a higher vocabulary than the average teenager; whatever the reason that is, I don't know.

Kids are also reading less and less, which I find really disappointing. One class, a student asked the teacher why people read by choice and the only answer the teacher had was that it's fun - the student couldn't even comprehend this (or at least tried not to, because who wants to be a loser that reads?). People always talk about Harry Potter and this awesome series and that, but half of them haven't even read the books and have only watched the movies (while the books are, ultimately, waaaaaaay better). People tell me they have no time to read; these are the same people who party and get hammered every Saturday night.

Also, I don't really think text talk has any real basis of the intelligence of this generation. My own mother texts like that. It's not really that big of a deal - I still use autocorrect but I normally spell out as much words as I can correctly without the use of it.

Wow, I sound so arrogant. c_c
 
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I don't think that our generation actually has a lower IQ or capability for intelligence than any previous generation. Technology actually gives us the ability to learn more than we ever could before. The actual problem with today's generation is that they are more close-minded and don't care about intelligence or learning. While I definitely don't think everyone is like this, it is a fairly large percentage that is. The problem isn't the presence of technology, but rather the way in which society has decided to use it.
 

ANARCHit3cht

Call me Archie!
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You pretty much hit the nail on the head right there. I am one of the few people I know my age that actually reads a book to enjoy it. Most kids nowadays only read books because they have to. But can you really blame them? The education system destroys the concept of reading. Rather than it being something you can enjoy, they force reading to be a chore. Either by being at page x on a certain day, or having to remember a bunch of stupid facts that aren't particularly important. Or being told that there is only one way to feel about a book, or only one less to draw from the story.

I believe a large part of being intelligent lies in the desire to actually know stuff. Modern society stigmatizes knowing things, for whatever odd reason.

EDIT: @Mareeep: There has been a relative drop in the IQ of many people... in the Western World anyway. I don't feel like getting the research, but I will if you really think its that important. That aside, IQ has never really been a measure of intelligence, making it's name quite a misnomer. It gauges merely one facet of the many different things that intelligence is comprised of. Not to mention, there are many other factors that actually get in the way of testing IQ in most methods. For example, on a typical IQ quiz for lets say a verbal portion, it typically has to do with spelling. And most anyone can concede that spelling has little to do with intelligence.
 
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EDIT: @Mareeep: There has been a relative drop in the IQ of many people... in the Western World anyway. I don't feel like getting the research, but I will if you really think its that important. That aside, IQ has never really been a measure of intelligence, making it's name quite a misnomer. It gauges merely one facet of the many different things that intelligence is comprised of. Not to mention, there are many other factors that actually get in the way of testing IQ in most methods. For example, on a typical IQ quiz for lets say a verbal portion, it typically has to do with spelling. And most anyone can concede that spelling has little to do with intelligence.

You're right, I probably shouldn't have used IQ as an example, as there are more factors than just intelligence, such as personality type and specific skills, that go into getting a high IQ score. However, I was referring to a more widespread change in IQ, that over say a hundred years, than that from generation to generation. An article by the American Psychological Association states, "Over the past 100 years, Americans' mean IQ has been on a slow but steady climb. Between 1900 and 2012, it rose nearly 30 points, which means that the average person of 2012 had a higher IQ than 95 percent of the population had in 1900." I would link the article, but I haven't made enough posts to do that yet. This does not necessarily reflect a change in intelligence, as you stated, because there is more than just intelligence in the Intelligence Quotient, such as personality, and if an INTP and an EFSJ of equal intelligence were to take an IQ test, the INTP would score higher. Thank you for replying, and intelligently. I always enjoy being able to have an intelligent discussion with someone. :)
 

Shhmew

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Hmm, interesting topic, but I think it's all subjective. Almost like comparing apples to oranges. It's like that age old comparison... "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." I think that's Albert Einstein. Sure there's a lot of text speak but since when is that unintelligent? It's just different. I agree it can get annoying, and yeah people should put more effort in to just write the full word... but it's easier and more convenient for many, so many people are going to do it. It's just a fact of our language evolving. It's just changing. Whether it's for the better or for the worse is opinion-based.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head right there. I am one of the few people I know my age that actually reads a book to enjoy it. Most kids nowadays only read books because they have to. But can you really blame them? The education system destroys the concept of reading. Rather than it being something you can enjoy, they force reading to be a chore. Either by being at page x on a certain day, or having to remember a bunch of stupid facts that aren't particularly important. Or being told that there is only one way to feel about a book, or only one less to draw from the story.
I agree, there are also restrictions like this that unfortunately get in the way of progressing. Growing up I had to participate in a program called AR (Accelerated Reading), and it was absolutely awful. Each book was ranked to a certain difficulty, and every time you finished a book you had to take a test on it. Getting a good score brought your grade up, bad score brought it down. (more difficult books affected your grade more) Some kids were just naturally way into the Harry Potter series and just read those and took the tests and got good grades, therefore had skyrocketing grades. But for me, I found it more difficult to read books that large at that age, let alone take tests on them... and the smaller books just didn't bring your grade up enough. Not only that, teachers would scold me for choosing a book so "easy". I'd feel so pressured and worry so much about getting a perfect score, I'd bomb the tests, and as a result my grade plummeted and I quickly never ever wanted to read again. It's a shame.

In high school it was just repeated with having to read a certain amount of pages each night and I just better hope I get a good grade on the test for it.

(For the record, nowadays I actually really enjoy reading for fun!)

But anyway, back on topic, I just see our generation as different. Some things may be questionable or undesirable to many, but we are progressing in many ways as well, and I'm excited to see what direction we go (also sometimes just a little afraid... haha) [:
 
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Unfortunately, I agree.
Why it must be "YOLO####" Instead of "You only live once"? Because of the one second difference while saying it? Oy Vey Zmir... [Yiddish]
I HATE IT.
Plus, it makes some idiotic trends like crapping with an open door, taking a picture of it and write down "YOLO## LOL"... Sheer stupidity.

So yea, the world is getting dumber.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kqLVeP7iHA[/ame]
 
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Don't you think it just depends on the era? We live in revolutionary times, where technological advance is seen as most important. The course of history has changed since the more technological world started, and now the media are openly accessible. I just think modern day people do not know how to handle the Internet yet, with facebook and twitter: they just want to be cool (yes, this is an awful generalisation but I hope you understand me). The world as we know it is new, and has not been here ever before. The confused teen generation nowadays therefore starts acting in a so-called "stupid" way.
 

Puddle

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Your teacher is just going on a rant of "Back in my day...". Less vocabulary since the cavemen ages? Yeah, sure. I'm pretty sure that people back in year 400-500, where the closest thing to school was "priests teaching noble kids" and "priests teaching other priests" helped people have a rich and awesome vocabulary. By the middle ages, only priests and kings/lords knew Latin anymore, because people all over Europe had bastardized it into dozens of languages- because they hadn't been taught how to write/read for centuries. Damn, most people never ever saw a book in their entire lives. I'm sure they had more vocabulary than us, right? I'm pretty sure factory workers from the Victorian Age (who were the majority of the population, by the way) had time to read and keep phylosophical debates. I'm pretty sure the American slaves and the West pioneers had an extremely rich language.

Your teacher is just saying "when I was your age, we read a lot, at least when we weren't playing on the street or watching TV which uh was what we were doing most of the time BUT ANYWAYS you new generations are terrible in comparison to my nostalgia-filtered memories".

I will agree that texting lenguage is terrible in any way, but as long as it's kept for that and people still know how and when you should write normally, I don't think it's bad.

I'm a little late to tell you this, but actually, my teacher is 24. She's fresh out of college and is in our same generation.
 

Golden Warrior

Pokemon Professor
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Although a few people here have already said what I would have anyway, I'll just put in my two cents.

The world isn't getting dumber, this generation is just... different. Also, the idea that we have the smallest vocabulary since caveman times is a ridiculous accusation. Honestly, I cannot agree with anyone who says this, because when you look at it, we just abbreviate things more, we know the words, we just try simplifying them.

Unfortunately, I agree.
Why it must be "YOLO####" Instead of "You only live once"? Because of the one second difference while saying it? Oy Vey Zmir... [Yiddish]
I HATE IT.
Plus, it makes some idiotic trends like crapping with an open door, taking a picture of it and write down "YOLO## LOL"... Sheer stupidity.

Again, with YOLO, people are just shortening it, although I myself don't see the reason. Now, as for that last part... that's not the ENTIRE GENERATION, that's just some kids online thinking they're cool and making themselves look like absolute fools. There are a ton of stupid trends out there, but we don't have to follow them. Hence, I disagree, because many in this generation are smart, not all are, but we're not getting any dumber, just... adapting to technology in a way.

Look at people doing all this YOLO stuff, most of them are on a phone, it's darn hard to write on a phone (for me, anyway). Thus, they simplify the typing to shorten the amount of time needed to write and lower the effort needed. Not dumber, just... simpler.

Every time I post in these topics I wonder if I I said what I meant to. XD
 

Corvus of the Black Night

Wild Duck Pokémon
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I hate broad statements like this because it implies that everyone bar a select few are part of a "stupid trend". In reality, society as a whole, regardless of the generation, is full of really stupid people. Look at all the people who are older who argue that tradition is why we should ban gay marriage. Stupidity exists in every generation and it manifests itself in a way that is applicable to issues that are relevant to that generation.
 
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Then perhaps the "stupidity" we see in society addressed by this discussion is just a clash of generations - the older generations criticizes us for laziness and poor vocabulary while we criticize the older generations for uncritical social views. I guess the context in which one opinion is dominant shows which generation is being taken more seriously: the OP of this thread assumes the position of the older generations, while daigonite's post comes from a more contemporary perspective.

Most of us will be on the other side of the clash in about thirty years time :P
 

Poki

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I know a lot of people who act intelligent by using complex words when writing on forums, but can't say half the ♥♥♥♥ in real life. Or, at least, when I'm having a private conversation with them on the net.

The thing is, you can still be intelligent without having an extended vocabulary. Because there are people who try to fool others into thinking they're smart by using words they don't even know the meaning of. (We all know that it's not gonna end in their favor)
 
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I know a lot of people who act intelligent by using complex words when writing on forums, but can't say half the ♥♥♥♥ in real life. Or, at least, when I'm having a private conversation with them on the net.

The thing is, you can still be intelligent without having an extended vocabulary. Because there are people who try to fool others into thinking they're smart by using words they don't even know the meaning of. (We all know that it's not gonna end in their favor)

I agree with your stance that the vocabulary of an individual should not be the sole measurement used to determine whether someone is intelligent or not. Often times my parents jokingly ask, "Who, between your sister and you, is smarter?" Instead of giving them a straight answer, I always answer with telling that there are different kinds of "smart." Though I may not have a mind capable of being a doctor, learning about the workings of the body, I consider myself intelligent in other fields like technology and what-not. People have different talents, interests and those could potentially influence where their intelligence comes from. On the basis of vocabulary size, that only defines an individual's literary comprehension in the field of reading. What about those who aren't particularly good at English, but are brilliant in mathematics? You cannot simply judge a person's intelligence based on their vocabulary.
 
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I think our generation is just continuing the trend of compartmentalizing and specializing knowledge. With the Internet, there really isn't any reason to become a jack of all trades and be great at social science, hard science and mathematics all at the same time (which sadly is demanded by current primary and secondary school curricula.) But yes, in today's hypercapitalist and globalized world, we're more pressured to hone our comparative advantages and use them. So it might seem that some people are "stupid" but you are using a form of measurement that is not accurately gauging what they are actually trained at. Does a Natural scientist need to be throughly fluent and know every word in the English language to express themselves? Does a sociologist or Policy maker need to know the complex equations that govern the natural laws of the universe? See it's all relative to the needs of the person to funtion in everyday life.
 

OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire

10000 year Emperor of Hoenn
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I think the Opening poster's teacher is simply looking back at the "glory days". Every era someone does it, Plato did it, and one day we will probably do it too. There were several people who were illiterate in the past hundred years who knew lesser words than we do, or about the same. It's difficult to prove this statement as sources of spoken language are scarce unlike with written language (which at a time were written by mostly monks, or scribes rather than the common everyday men and women).
 

Taemin

[i][b]MOVE[/i][/b]
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Our generation is certainly different than the last, but while we're tech obsessed, and maybe occasionally lazy with school work, we're also more educated and open about matters involving equality and rights than they are. Some of us are understanding of issues that they would turn up their noses at, and not even attempt to debate. What some of us can do with computers would make them have heart attacks. Their generation had its share of people that were "stupid" as well, if that's what you wanna call it. You never hear of the uneducated because they never made a name for themselves, you only hear of the success.
 

Phantom1

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All of this is highly circumstantial.

Intelligence is relative. What I call intelligent you might call the opposite.

Take the vocabulary argument. Instead of looking at how many words a child or young adult knows, how about we look at the words themselves? Language is an ever evolving thing, just like society. It grows with us. Will our grandmother know what a 'selfie' is? No, but it's actually a dictionary-legit word now. The fact is that society is changing to a more socially relaxed form of language, in part to a more relaxed culture and one that, well, wants to text with a higher wpm.

Are children losing intelligence due to the internet? No. Feel free to call me on it, but the ability to look up something on Google seems more common sense than to do it the old fashioned way. I grew up doing essays without the internet. You know what we used? Encyclopedia sets. Huge ones. Like, fifty book sets of them. Our teachers would give us a library day and we'd have to research our topics. I remember waiting for the person ahead of me to finish the letter group I needed, or groups would use the same book and pass them along. Now, had Google existed back then, would using those books have been the wisest of choices? The most 'common sense' choice? A world of hell no! Instead of spending an hour to a half hour looking for information to use, and hoping to find it, I could spend seconds on a Google search and have an abundance of information available to me, from multiple different sources.

While I'm all up for kids being more interested in book-reading... ever heard the term 'book smart, common sense stupid'? It comes to mind.

Society changes. As technology becomes more readily available people will become accustomed to a simpler way of life. Because that's what technology IS people, it's the simplification of life's day to day using inventions and new ideas.
 
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