the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture. While this came out in 2009 it could not be more current . The recent unrest continues to point to a failure of public education .
For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought they saw an answer: the internet, email, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.