Maggie Shaw – Generation Isolation

In the 15 years you’ve been teaching here, with the advent of social media and smartphones, have you noticed any changes in the way students learn, take in information, or interact?

Big changes. They are used to immediate gratification and they don’t know how to limit their use. A lot of them are addicted to whatever social media platform is the hottest one of the moment. And trying to teach them that, that is a passing, fleeting thing and this is real life right here, is hard because they’re teenagers, they know it all, and this is my social life, don’t talk to me about that.

To get them to put it away in class and listen to the material presenting, and keep them entertained per se, is getting more and more difficult. So much so that I actually came up with an installation art project.

A very strong senior visual arts class I had, we created plastic figurines and each of the figurines we had set up like they were in a room together crowded, but each of them had a device. Whether it be a cell phone, or an iPad, or a laptop, or they were playing a video game, or watching a movie. They were all there together, but all of them had their face in a screen. So they think that they’re connected, they think they’re so connected because of these devices, but really they’re so isolated, and we called it “Generation Isolation”.

Listening to the students talk about how it really opened their eyes to what they were doing and seeing the effects that it’s having, even on them. Being nervous and afraid to have face-to-face conversations with people, even their own peers, so being more comfortable just to text it to them.

Some of them go so far as even having a hard time talking on the telephone to someone. Standing up to do a presentation is getting harder and harder.