The Wealth of Information and Students

In this age of social media and wealth of information we are drown in nonsense. Everyday we are flooded with articles on how to impress the other sex and the most recent stupid thing President Trump has tweeted. In the Brave New World, Aldous Huxley discussed his concern that "there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one." and that "the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance". In this new age we see this coming to pass. Most highschoolers nowadays won't even pick up a book, and if they're forced to then Sparknotes and audio books are the way to feed this information into their brains. We've lost all meaning of learning information for ourselves, as we can Google our homework and and memorize without understanding. Students are contributing to dumbing themselves down. With the rise of drama YouTube channels and the lust for pleasure, we are leading to self oppression by limiting the information we feed ourselves. I came into Troy High being mocked for picking up a book instead of texting, for loving history, and for actually having to study for my grades. For students it's about the grade and not about learning. When I came to school, a girl approached me and gave me some "pointers". 1. Sparknotes is your bestfriend, 2. everything is on Google, and 3. don't eat the school lunches. But no, you can't gain experience from Sparknotes, you can't learn a new perspective or gain a wealth of information. You can't Google your way to a brain, you can't gain intelligence from not doing work yourself. We are attracted to ease, to having that extra second to do whatever it is that we do. Ease gets you nowhere, it's challenging yourself that helps sharpen you and make it so you don't drown in this "sea of irrelevance."