The Dumbest Generation—How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future: . Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, New York, 2008; 978-1-58542-639-3

Having worked professionally “pre-Internet” in engineering for about $25\text{years}$ , I appreciate the efficiency and effectiveness of the Internet, cell phones, and other information technology (IT). With it, we can do research in five minutes that, a few decades ago, may have taken five days elapsed time using our local library. Geographically dispersed members of a project team or a committee can interact via e-mail, share data and information, conduct analyses, discuss issues, and prepare reports with few, if any, face-to-face meetings.

Today’s effectiveness of and easy access to IT almost makes some of us well into our careers wish we could restart them. Given today’s communication tools, perhaps we could have accomplished even more, or accomplished as much, with less effort.

Today’s young people—including students and engineer interns—are fortunate. They use communication technology to learn, conduct research, share, collaborate, network, and create, in other words, to do great things. Or do they?

Not according to Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. He claims that U.S. young people, which he defines as those under about $30\text{years}$ of age, are under-using or misusing IT and related electronic gadgetry available to them. Bauerlein argues that today’s youth employ IT to extend and deepen adolescence and to connect even more with their homogeneous peer groups rather than using it to reach out and learn about the world and its inhabitants. This use of IT shifts the young even more into pop culture while taking them away from world culture.

For example, instead of using the Internet after class to learn more about what was presented in class, many of today’s students use the Internet in class to visit YouTube or MySpace. Rather than viewing the Internet as one of many sources of data, information, and knowledge, Bauerlein argues that today’s young professionals use it as the source and, therefore, they do not verify or dig deeper or explore wider, often no deeper or wider than the first Web page on which they find something relevant. Instead of reading books, which tend to include higher-level vocabulary, today’s youth, again according to the author, skim the Internet, much of which employs very simple vocabulary, thus incurring opportunity lost costs.

The author is careful to define the scope of his book which is the development, or lack thereof, of the minds of U.S. youth. He writes: “This book is an attempt to consolidate the best and broadest research into a different profile of the rising American mind. It doesn’t cover behaviors and values, only the intellect of under- $30\text{-}\text{year}$ -olds.” As an added caveat, this book, which is subtitled Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30, addresses youth, in general. It does not single out sub-groups such as current or aspiring engineers

According to the author, this under-use and misuse of IT and related electronic devices has very negative consequences for our youth, and eventually the United States. His view:

Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has contracted their horizon to themselves, to the social scene around them…the more they attend to themselves, the less they remember the past and envision the future . . . The founts of knowledge are everywhere, but the rising generation is camped in the desert, passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, living off the thrill of peer attention.

Author Bauerlein claims that serious study and the resulting learning of knowledge and skills of today’s youth are slipping. He uses the results of many studies to conclude that the bulk of today’s youth are anti-intellectual; “uninterested in world realties,” past and present; deficient in use of the English language; and unable to think critically. And, to reiterate, he attributes these liabilities to misuse and under-use of IT.

I’m not convinced that the situation is as dire as Mark Bauerlein claims. Frankly, at times this college English professor sounds frustrated and even angry. However, anecdotal evidence suggests to me that today’s youth make heavy use of the Internet and electronic gadgets and that much of the use is frivolous.

Perhaps, on the assumption that the book’s thesis has some merit, each sector of the engineering profession should conduct a self-examination. For example, are we wisely using IT in engineering education? How might more, less, or better use of IT enhance our business and government operations? Do we really know how faculty, students, employers, clients, owners, and others use IT? And finally, outside of the world of business and the professions, how is IT being used in our homes? Neil Armstrong, astronaut and engineer, offers this relevant thought: “Technology does not improve the quality of life; it improves the quality of things. Improving the quality of life requires the application of wisdom.” Is our profession making wise use of technology?