January 27

One idea that was presented in David Brooks, The Moral Bucket List, that is contradicted in Gilbert’s book, “Reporting Live for Tomorrow”, deals with the matter about having children. In Brooks’s article, he speaks about Dorothy Day and her daughter, and how having a child was the best thing to happen to her. At a young age, Day feel down a dark path of drinking and suicidal attempts, but once she had her daughter, she turned her life around and turned to religion and helped others in need. When it comes to Gilbert’s book, however, the concept of having children is different. Gilbert feels that if you were to ask women with children what they would like to do better, take care of their kids or go shopping and do other activities, they would choose the ladder. Gilbert does not agree that children are a true source of happiness and how they have positive effects on people’s lives. 

January 30

One idea from Sanderson’s speech that connects to one of my own life experiences has to do with exercise. Around minute 27, Sanderson was listing off some of the ways people become happy. She said that one way was to work out and mentioned how afterwards, you feel accomplished. I have been a swimmer for 12 years and I even swim for the UNE swim team. The reason why I have kept with the sport is because while I am swimming, I always have a feeling of joy. This is because while I am swimming, it allows me to relieve tension by only focusing on the task at hand and not focusing on other factors that cause me stress, such as school work. It calms me down and lowers my anxiety. Even after my swim, I feel better than I did before the swim, just as Sanderson said.

February 17

According to Turkle, having a meaningful conversation means that you are talking to one another in person. Most people today try to converse with others through technology, but Turkle adds in points through her writing about how real conversations should go. She talks about how they should be face to face and should incorporate eye contact. This way people are able to really know the feelings of the other person and grow empathy. She also adds in her writing a story about Henry Thoreau, and how his journey living in a cabin by himself brought to light a way of having a fruitful conversation. She demonstrates that there were three chairs in the cabin and while talking about the deep meaning that furniture represented, she wrote, “these three chairs plot points on a virtuous circle that links conversation to the capacity of empathy and for self-reflection” (Turkle 382). She goes on in explaining that the first chair, which represents solitude, allows us to figure out ourselves, the second chair, which represents friendship, allows us to listen to others, and the third chair, which represents society, allows us to become better with dialogue. These are important factors to keep in mind because they will help guide you in the right direction to how to have strong conversations with others. Most people think that technology is the other way to have conversations nowadays, but Turkle is trying to bring back how it used to be, before the storm of technology hit.

February 20

In Jean M. Twenge’s article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, she writes statistical facts about smartphones and how they lead to mental health effects. She writes about phones taking over our generation, referring to us as I-Gen. She goes into details about correlations of how smartphones relate to effects such as depression, lonliness and even suicide. Some of her ideas are able to be connected to Sherry Turkle’s, The Empathy Diaries, where she talks about the meaning of having a real conversation with empathy and how this generation is spending more time on their phones than face-to-face conversation. One specific passage that connects them deals with how we do not talk to each other in person anymore. In Twenge’s writing, she wrote about a girl in the I-Gen and she talks about how “she spent much of her summer keeping up with friends, but nearly all of it was over text or snap chat. “I’ve been on my phone more than I’ve been with actual people,” she said” (Twenge). This shows a real world example of how children chose to spend their time, and how shocking it is that they prefer to spend most of their time on a device rather than to other people. It connects to what Turkle wrote about, as she stated, “The very sight of a phone on the landscape leaves us feeling less connected to each other, less invested in each other” (Turkle). This proves Turkles point that the more that phones are on the rise, the more we want to use them and the less we want to interact with each other. Each of them prove the point that we as this generation do not connect as personally as we did in the previous generations. This is a real problem in the world and they both want to prove this point.

February 24

One idea that I challenge in Matt Richtel’s writing is evident in his article Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction. Richtel talks about a boy named Vishal Singh and his dedication to technology. In the beginning, it speaks about Vishal’s principal David Reilly and his method to get children off their technology. His method includes asking “teachers to build Web sites to communicate with students, introduce popular classes on using digital tools to record music, secured funding for iPads to teach Mandarin and obtained $3 million in grants for a multimedia center” (Richtel). Reilly made an effort to get so much technology into the school program and hoped that this will steer kids off their phones and video games and more towards using technology in a smater manner, such as for school work. He even put it that he is using technology to get kids off of technology. I disagree with this method because I feel like in order to get someone off of their devices in a school setting, more paper assignments should be used. In the beginning, children will be upset because they are addicted to being online, but they will be able to adapt to an offline setting and it will limit their device use. I know when it comes to me, I learn better writing things down rather than typing. I feel other people would feel this way as well. 

One idea that I agree with in Matt Richtel’s writing is in his article Attached to Technology and Paying the Prince. Richtel spends time talking about Kord Campbell and how technology is the biggest part of his life. Richtel explains Campbell’s technological life and how “these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life” (Richtel). This shows that the amount of time spent on devices can cause someone to lose ideas that they have in their mind and their memories. Richtel explains later on that Campbell started to lose memory because of how much he is online, even forgetting to pick up kids. I agree with this because I have seen times where people are so involved in using technology that they tend to lose track of their time and concepts. I have seen this in situations such as studying in groups of friends with devices where they ask me an answer to a question and I tell them and then ten minutes later they ask the same question. They have no recollection of even asking me and I have seen this more than once. This shocks me, and even though I know it will happen again, I hope that people using technology will become smarter.

March 25:

While watching Hayden Shaw’s Ted Talk, “Why Half of What you Hear about Millennials is Wrong”, there were points brought up that I was able to connect to my life. Towards the middle of his speech he talks about the three aspects that categories emerging adulthood: freedom, choice, and change. I realized while he mentioned these aspects that this fits into my life as I see what my sister is going through right now. My sister is 27 right now and is newly wed. In college, she changed her major a few times and went to different colleges. She graduated in 2014 as an occupational therapist but still had to wait to take her boards. Right now, she passed her boards, and she is looking for a place to settle down. She even has come to live with us while she was figuring it out. My parents are surprised about why it was taking her so long to do so but the reason for this is because she is emerging into adulthood and has time to decide. She does not have to feel rushed like it was in the baby boomer generation or ages before that. The more time she takes the better off she will be. 

Other than myself, I am also able to make connections between Shaw’s Ted Talk and writing in Robin Marantz Henig’s, “What Is It about 20-Somethings?”. In Shaw’s Ted Talk, he talks about how emerging adulthood occurs between the ages of 27-28. He even talks about how if you asked someone when emerging adulthood would occur, they would say those ages. This is later than it has ever been before. This connects to Henig as she mentions, too, how this age is much later than seen in previous generations. She talks specifically about marriages and how, “The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and and 28 for men, five years and a little more than a generation” (202). Both Shaw and Henig are able to show how in this millennial generation, we are talking more time to grow up and becoming more prepared for adulthood.