"R u really reading" response

Ariella Aghalarian

In today’s day and age technology plays a major role in our lives. Whether it is using the phone, listening to your ipod, or surfing the web, we now can’t even imagine our lives without these opportunities. Similar to the readings we have recently done, the article “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” by the New York Times, also speaks of the debate between Internet vs. print reading.
The article starts by speaking about a girl, Nadia’s, mother admitting that she’s even happy that her daughter is reading anything at all, even though it’s on the Internet because her daughter does not even open books. Many parents feel like Nadia’s mother since the popularization of the web. Those who support reading from the web, like Mr. Gioia of the N.E.A. claims that “What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading,” and he believes that is the cause of low scores on reading comprehension tests. Others say that the Internet inspires people to read and write. It engages students in reading and text and even makes students with disabilities comfortable with reading. Students are able to engage in cognitively demanding tasks such as locating information quickly and accurately, corroborating findings on multiple sites, which may seem like nothing to those of us who are familiar with the web but either way, it is a learning process. As the article says, analyzing pictures and videos are just the same as analyzing a book or a poem, I agree. Both tasks involve cognitive work and both abilities are essential nowadays especially when everything now is mostly dependant the web and current technology. Experts even said that they should start testing kids on computer reading as well because being familiar with such things are what will help children get jobs in the future.
Even though the debate seems to just be saying that either the internet doesn’t allow us to acquire the same knowledge as reading a book would or that the internet allows us to basically have a new way of learning, I agree with the chairman of the N.E.A who says that “benefits of electronic media do not override the benefits of frequent reading” however, I do believe that the benefits can be almost equal. I mean sure, it’s unsettling that Nadia can not get through the second book that her mother brought, but she did get through the first, because she liked it. I for sure know from experience that I will really only read a book in its entirety either if I have to or if I truly enjoy it. Who would read a book they didn’t like? Even when we are online, no matter what we are doing is learning. Reading facebook statuses we are able to subconsciously compaer grammar and see if what we are reading makes sense to then improve our own “writing”. Watching different movies others make on youtube we’re able to learn new ways of creativity aside from, for example, creative writing. For some, this type of learning is something they can do easily and enjoy. I do still love to just take that really well written romance novel and read it without interruption, but is refreshing to know that, for example, the web can make doing a research paper much easier and faster because “The internet gives you what you need, nothing more and nothing less.” If it can help students who are not fluent readers learn and if it could improve the lives of the less fortunate children, I don’t see why people have to make such a big fuss over it. We can’t blame only the Internet for declining test scores and we can’t expect our generation to not be addicted to the web or texting or cell phones because they are what we grew up knowing. So, it’s making us stupider, as Carr implies, it actually may even be making us smarter, just in different ways than is expected. With everything “new” there are always negatives and positives- we just have learn to worth with both.