Do the kids a favor

If you want to do your children a favor this summer, make sure they read a book. In fact, that’s not bad advice for all of us.

People of all ages seem to spend more time online, but the evidence is mounting that the internet may be shaping our minds in less than desirable ways. As a writer for Business Week put it, many of us are becoming “mindless consumers of data.” We surf the net, but learn little of lasting value. We get sidetracked with pop-ups, You Tube videos, jokes and links, and hop from one topic to another.

Apparently the longterm memory can only handle three or four things at a time, so the bombardment of information is not really teaching us as much as we imagine.

And, that doesn’t even get to the quality of the information we are being hit with. So much of modern media is right wing or left wing propaganda disguised as news, or simply downright rumor. It’s designed not to convey facts and a variety of opinions, but to enrage people or entice them to take on the political slant of the commentator or blogger.

Nicholas Carr, a writer who specializes in technology subjects, says he realized what the internet was doing to his brain when he began to have trouble concentrating on longer, more complex works. In his book The Shallows, Carr wonders whether internet browsing somehow satisfies our primitive hunter-gatherer tendencies to the detriment of our intellectual side.

An even bleaker picture is painted by Florida novelist and newspaper columnist Carl Hiaasen. He recently told Smithsonian magazine that based on the Miami area, “the human race is actually de-evolving, that we are moving back on the evolutionary scale.”

Which brings us back to where we started: making sure your kids (and you) read books. Their importance cannot be overrated. University of Nevada sociologists have concluded that a child born into a family of average income and education — but with 500 books in the house – will average 12 years of education. That’s three years more than the same child with no books at home. The study involved 73,000 people in 27 countries over 20 years.

Of course, homes with lots of books most likely value knowledge. Sadly, Americans seem to have lost their respect for learning. Oh, they may still want the degree so they can earn a bigger salary, but the actual learning doesn’t seem to matter as much. Some fear that for the first time, we are in an age when children are less well-educated than their parents. This doesn’t bode well for the future.

So, make a trip to the library or bookstore this week. It may be the smartest thing you’ll do all summer.