Technology Is Not The Problem

Steve Lopez of the LA Times checks in on the students of the California Academy for Liberal Studies Early College High School in downtown Los Angeles as they languish in the desert of a seven day teacher-enforced media fast. Deprived of their phones and iPods for a whole week and writing about it ("With pen and paper"), these high schoolers hear birds singing and devour actual books and reconnect in face-to-face interactions with family and friends. It's beautiful.

Except, I'm not buying it.

It's far too simple to assert, as this experiment and countless rants about "kids these days" do, that the media and technology are the problem, and that if you only remove that the kids will be alright. The Sidekicks and iPods connect kids to one anothter in ways that seem meaningless and shallow to adults but that to the kids themselves, I'm persuaded, are actually quite meaningful.

The technology ain't the enemy.