I’m a little astounded by how quickly some people are willing to just throw up their hands and, rather than learning how to gain more willpower and self-control in their life, use technology tools as a substitute for learning those skills. Or how some suggest how we seem to be at the mercy of social networking sites, which have some sort of undeniable power over us, our choices and our behaviors.
I’m talking about the article in today’s Boston Globe from Tracy Jan bemoaning how college students nowadays are “tangled in an endless web of distractions.” The article reads like college students are saying, “The Internet and Facebook are just too darned addicting, I can’t help myself!”
It’s gotten so bad that some college professors — even at the venerable technology university, MIT — are outright banning laptops in class. Oh, the tragedy!
Except none of this is new. Or news.