Summary Of Growing Up Digital, Wired For Distraction

Matt Richtel’s article “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction” displays that technology is becoming a particularly large problem among teens and young adults; it is starting to affect their grades and sleep patterns. While teens are struggling to choose between the real world and the virtual one, many schools are starting to integrate technology into their curriculum to hopefully engage students more. The author shows this by stating, “But even as some parents and educators express unease about students’ digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills,” (par. 8). The author is proposing that maybe if schools start using more technology, the classes would become more interesting to the students and attendance would improve for those classes, and possibly even other classes that are not using a more modern curriculum.
The author continues on to explain that technology gives teens different options from homework; video games, T.V., texting or social media and most students will choose the ladder, because they think it will get them ahead in life more than school and homework will. The author clarifies this
The author demonstrates this by reiterating what teen Vishal Singh said about colleges, “He says the chief difference is that filmmaking feels applicable to his chosen future, like the University of South Carolina or the California Institution of the Arts in Los Angeles, will be so impressed with his portfolio that they will overlook his school performance,” (par. 70). The author is trying to convey that teens think if they do something so well in their chosen career, colleges might just look pass the D’s and F’s some of these children