Did you know that Justin Bieber’s Baby video is the most watched video EVER in the world?!  It has over 620 million views on youtube and has been officially recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records.  Roger Ebert, the infamous movie critic has half a million followers on Twitter.  Companies are spending as much time trying to get consumers to “like” them on Facebook as they are trying to actually sell  a product.  It seems as though we are back in junior high, where everything has become a popularity contest.  Or maybe it’s always been that way!

Today while running, I listened to some CBC.  One of the programs I enjoy is called Spark, hosted by Norah Young.  One of her guests this week was Cathy Davidson, a professor at Duke University.  The conversation revolved around the education system and how it needs reform, particularly focused on the way that current generations of youth pay attention.  “We need education that supports the new ways we ought to pay attention”, she says.  She goes on to argue that there is no evidence to back up the fact that playing video games and all of our time in front of screens has any affect on our attention.  I’d have to find the research again, but I’m next to positive that studies have shown that children between the ages of 1-5 have an increased risk of ADHD with every additional hour they spend in front of screens.  So I find it interesting when a supposed expert has free say on an issue without being challenged… you can hear the full interview here.

My brain is full of tangents right now with hardly anything concise to say at all!  But I am fearful when we start talking about our education system needing to follow suit to meet the needs of a generation that is offered sound bites, tweets, and endless status updates as their way of making sense of this world.