I enjoyed this book!

This book came out in 2008/9, so he is talking about my generation, the millennials. Everything said in this book is even more true for gen Z, so I am excited to read his next book “the dumbest generation GROWS UP”, released in 2022, to see how much worse it’s gotten in the past decade.

This book doesn’t take a moral stance, which was nice. Instead it focuses purely on academic achievement and the habits (such as reading) that improve academics. In the 90s and early 00s there were a lot of books coming out that defended the internet and video games and TV as being good for education or brain development. I think this book did a good job of refuting all of that. By 2008 the numbers were already in - academic acuity in basically every category was way down. They’re down further now.

The “tech-savy” youngster, plugged into the “information superhighway”, has not and probably will not ever translate into a well educated and well skilled populace.

Honestly, I am truly scared for the future. This book goes into the fact that the dumbest generations are going to be (and are now), part of the voting population. They’ll be (and now are) running companies and teaching the next (even dumber) generation. I think we are seeing the world start to be run by millennials now, and it doesn’t look too good.

The book doesn’t really go into a strategy to reverse the trend, but I think readers will think hard about how they spend their time and what they allow their children to do with theirs.

I thought the book might be harsher on the youth, really make fun of them. But it didn’t. It was very tasteful to me and seemed to be more concerned than condemning.

Thumbs up 👍.