Argumentative Essay Sample 1000 words

Argumentative Essay Sample 1000 words

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Excessive Use of Computers and Internet in Educational Settings Should Be Limited Due to
Detrimental Effects on Youth
In his article entitled “Computers cannot teach children basic skills”, the American
writer, artist, and professor of computer science at Yale University, David Gelernter, states
that “Computers make our worst educational nightmares come true” (Gelernter). Indeed,
computers are endangering our verbal communication skills and imagination, as well as our
ability to reflect and focus, but can also exacerbate bad habits, all of which suggest that we
should limit their use in educational settings.
There are serious concerns with regard to how computers affect information
processing in younger people. David’s statement that "computers discount words in favor of
pictures and pictures in favor of video" reflect a dangerous influence of computers on our
method of processing information, which makes us lose important word manipulation
(verbal) skills but also impairs our ability to imagine things from zero (without visual aids),
based solely on a combination of words and the power of our minds. Indeed, every picture is
a stereotype – it spares the viewer from the mental effort of recreating it in his/her mind but
inevitable narrows the presented info/ concept to the visual representation provided. Of
course, a picture can substitute a thousand words when describing what a tree species or a
living cell looks like, while a video can explain much better than a hundred pictures how an
engine works. All these are indispensable in education as they facilitate understanding, but
they are useful as aids rather than full substitutes.

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An overabundance of media content creates an overload of poorly systematized
information and replaces other important thinking processes. According to Patricia
Greenfield, a professor of psychology at UCLA and director of the Children's Digital Media
Center in Los Angeles, "... most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for
reflection, analysis or imagination.” ("Is Technology Producing"). She also states that, with
regard to education, technology is not a panacea, considering the skills that are being lost as
technology is introduced progressively. According to research in her group (and not only),
reading is crucial in developing imagination, reflection, critical thinking, induction,
vocabulary and given that students nowadays read much less for pleasure, many of these have
better visual literacy but worse print literacy. According to Patricia, if schools want to
develop a variety of skills, then a balanced media consumption is needed (given that every
type of media impacts each skill differently).
Research reviewed by the group of Patricia Greenfield also included comparisons
between classes where students were given access to Internet and were encouraged to use it
with classes where no Internet access was given ("Is Technology Producing"). Those students
who could go online during classes, were not as aware of the information presented by the
speaker compared to the offline group and also performed worse on subsequent tests. This is
a good indication that the mania to connect each class to Internet is exaggerated and might
actually be counterproductive. In a similar study, students who watched CNN broadcasts with
crawling titles, stock market and other auxiliary information displayed on the screen
performed worse than those who did not see this additional information. The results of both
these studies confirm an obvious truth – multitasking is seriously affecting deep focus/
concentration abilities, which in many scenarios, equals to limiting productivity. Of course,
there are scenarios in which multitasking is a desired trait in many fields of professional
activity. Nevertheless, if we ask ourselves about what general quality we want our society to

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improve upon in order to ensure a brighter future: either to be more intelligent, creative,
reflective, and articulate or to know to multitask better, the priorities should be obvious.
According to Patricia Greenfield, visual intelligence has been increasing globally for
50 years. While in the 40’s, the visual performance of people, measured with the Raven’s
Progressive Metrics, degraded continuously and significantly from 25 to 65 years of age,
nowadays, the disparity is much smaller, which is believed by Patricia to be due to new
media technologies (visual). It would be very interesting, however, to assess the evolution of
other characteristics (for instance, imagination, verbal skills, spatial orientation) – it is very
likely that among these characteristics there is a steady decline in the current age.
Sherry Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT,
mentions several aspects that have been changed by the onset of the Information Age. Among
these is the fact that youth is getting accustomed to electronic surveillance (both
governmental and commercial) and start viewing privacy as a right but rather than as a
privilege (Turkle). Another aspect is the fact that people including children often create the
narratives and interact with others through the prism of online images (avatars) or online
identity, which may lead to occasional difficulties in switching to real-life communication.
With regard to social networks, one negative aspect is the limitation of real-life interaction
(and true relationships) and illusion of companionship without much reflection in real-life.
Yet another aspect is how formulating thoughts in written form has changed. Typing text
absolves us of the need to properly formulate thoughts and sentences in advance (like when
writing on paper or when using typewriters) – this is very likely to affect our verbal skills and
even the way we think!
With relation to presentation tools ubiquitous in the classroom, Edward R. Tufte
suggested that Power Point equates bulleting/lists with clear thinking, and focuses on
presentation rather than conversation, while doing nothing to teach students to start a

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discussion or construct a narrative. In the same context, the author mentions that "the culture
in which our children are raised is increasingly a culture of presentation, a corporate culture
in which appearance is often more important than reality" (Turkle B26). The author has the
same impression about the political discourse, in which "use of rhetorical devices at the
expense of cogent argument regularly goes without notice".
Computing devices and Internet also exacerbate many bad habits, for instance,
excessive media consumption, excessive gaming, excessive use of social networks, online
gambling (the fact that you can have an online casino means big temptations and difficult
withdrawal), but also online shopping, getting involved in conspiracy theories (due to
decentralized information which often turns out to be of poor quality). Such concepts not
only endanger the youth but the foundations of our society.
To conclude, the impact of computing devices coupled with Internet is very complex,
diverse, and often hard to track/ to account for. Some obvious ways in which these affect us
is by decreasing our imagination abilities and verbal skills our ability to focus on single tasks,
by skewing and replacing our normal social interactions, by forming bad habits, exposing us
to poor quality information, etc. In order to face all these challenges, we need to both limit
and control these technologies, especially in educational settings.

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Works Cited
Gelernter, David. "Computers Cannot Teach Children Basic Skills." Njcu.edu. Web.
"Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis?" ScienceDaily., 2009.
Web.
Turkle, Sherry. "How Computers Change the Way We Think." The Chronicle of Higher
Education 50.21 (2004): B26. Web.