Natalia Naman Temesgen: Losing the young minds to social media
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt wrote a fascinating piece in the September issue of The Atlantic entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind.”
It speaks about the growing hypersensitivity to and rejection of strong opinions among young adults, particularly on college campuses, and the effect it has on the way faculty members teach and students learn.
As comedians, politicians and even self-identified liberal professors have said, college students today are intent on avoiding and policing anything that might create a strong emotional response.
They can’t take a joke. They can’t take an opposing perspective. They expect to be alerted ahead of time if something on the syllabus will trigger certain emotions, so that they can opt out if they feel it will be too traumatic for them.
Maybe I’m getting old, but isn’t a central part of college being challenged and discomforted by the thoughts and views of others? Where does the Socratic method fall into all of this? If students feel they must police their words and thoughts to the point that even an innocently spoken naiveté labels them judgmental, closed-minded, bigoted or racist, it must be very difficult for them to speak at all.
I’ve seen this double-edged trait in my younger siblings and former students: The fear to offend and the compulsion to police anything that seems remotely offensive.
It certainly drives a wedge between cross-generational and cross-political discussions. And while the desire to maintain a positive, safe environment for all is admirable, it plays out as somewhat panicked and short-sighted in practice. In fact, in an effort to protect others, students often end up attacking the one whose opinion they dislike. What often results is a verbal assault in which individuals’ characters are called into question. The essence of what was initially being debated becomes irrelevant.
Lukianoff and Haidt argue that the hypersensitive generation basically grew up on Facebook, the oldest of which are finishing college this year. This may be, in part, due to the fact that social media allows us to cultivate opinions that closely line up with our own and reject those that do not.
Facebook debuted my freshman year of college and regular readers of my column know that I think it can have an incredible effect on a user’s social psychology. There is so much second and third guessing that goes into what you post, how you speak, who likes it and who doesn’t, that it effectively disorients the mind’s natural inclination to express itself freely.
And I get the value of being sensitive and empathetic to others. I really do. But I also get the value of being offended, off-put and rocked to your core by someone’s very different perspective. It’s what makes the world go round. It’s what makes you stronger and surer in who you are and what you believe. It’s ultimately what teaches us to be empathetic.
I see our society wading into another heavy PC-era, but I hate to think we’re losing independent young voices and minds in the process.
Natalia Naman Temesgen is an independent contractor. Contact her at nntemesgen@gmail.com.
This story was originally published September 19, 2015 at 10:14 PM with the headline "Natalia Naman Temesgen: Losing the young minds to social media."