[ExI] Teens use social media but not books or wider internet

[efc at disroot.org]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2024, BillK via extropy-chat wrote:

> I've just read an article that claims that younger teens that have
> grown up with social media all their lives don't feel the need for
> anything outside social media.
> There are always exceptions, of course, but this claim is for the majority.
>
> I asked an AI to comment and it agreed that teens are now avoiding
> books or searching the internet for information.
>
> BillK

That reminds me of something I saw on the news several months ago. It
was about a teacher in despair, because students now rely on chatbots
for facts. So a student came to him with a "fact" from a chat bot that
was obviously wrong, and the teacher tried to explain it, but the
student had a greater trust in the chat bot, so thought the teacher was
incompetent.

When I teach, I also note the fact that many youngster don't like to
think for themselves. The nr 1 request they have is that I should serve
them tasks and puzzles with detailed instructions about how to solve
them.

I refuse, and instead like to sit down with them and gently guide them
with questions about how to solve the problem, what unknowns they face,
where they could go to find the unknowns they need to find the problem
etc.

I then recommend my students the book "How to solve it" by Polya, but I
doubt anyone ever read it. ;)

Of course there then are the bright and brilliant few, with an innate
love of learning, but they take care of themselves, so from a teaching
point of view, they do not represent a challenge. But those guys do give
me the energy, that fuels me, when I try to get the rest of the class to
learn.