Shmuel Klitsner uses the half-Shabbos brouhaha to take another tilt at modern media. Modern media, according to his analysis (and that of many other educators), has affected our childrens brains to the point where theyre addicted to texting, cant maintain long periods of concentration or even attention and
there was something else; itll come to me. They quote McLuhan and a couple of popular-science books for support, with perhaps here-and-there a research paper.
Maybe theyre right. Certainly I dont know, since I (like they) have not done basic research on brain plasticity and related phenomena. But for an example of a popular scientist who argues against their position, see Steven Pinker (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11Pinker.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print).
If, for the sake of argument, we adopt the position that says Twitter has not turned the kids into twits at an organic level, how can we explain the behavior that were seeing? I have some suggestions:
1. Perhaps were not seeing it. Many communities of practitioners are subject to fads, crazes and panics. Ive seen it among Software people, financiers and others including educators (carpenters and plumbers seem to be immune). Klitsner himself points out the wide disparity of estimates on the Shabbos-texting phenomenon among kids, parents and educators. (He assumes that the Truth lies with the teenagers and brings down the other opinions to highlight our naiveté. I can see why he would believe the teenagers in this case, as I hope he can see why I would never believe a group of teenagers about anything.)
2. A related, but not identical idea is that the phenomenon exists but is not fundamentally new, rather its a new manifestation of old phenomena, like a bone-through-the-nose would be a new (or, arguably, very very old) manifestation of extensive tattooing, which itself may be a newer manifestation of long hair.
3. Or maybe, just maybe, the steady downhill movement of student patience, depth and commitment parallels not the descent from MTV to Wikipedia to Twitter but rather the steadily-decreasing demands (material, homework, tests, etc.) that educators place on them and the steady increase in pandering to their shallowest, basest selves.
The subject came up last night at the Shabbos table with some recent graduates of Frisch, JEC and MTA. None of them claimed personal knowledge of the phenomenon and all doubted the existence of a group of fellow students who consider themselves basically shomer Shabbos but cant help texting. The Frisch alumnus said the most likely explanation is that a significant group of kids is simply not shomer Shabbos at all in their own minds, but fake it to avoid friction with their parents. Those kids may text on the assumption that, it being silent and unobtrusive, they can get away with it.
I stand by my refusal to get my facts from a bunch of teenagers (no offense, guys), but Im willing to trade anecdote-for-anecdote if necessary.
Michael
