On Some Negative Impacts of Internet and Entertainment

              On Some Negative Impacts of Internet and Entertainment

Over the past two decades or so, personal computer and Internet has permeated into the whole human society, and therefore, most people will naturally think that Internet has promoted the universal progress of human society, and undoubtedly, computer technologies, like Google and Office, do bring great convenience to people’s lives and speed up the wide spread of various knowledge, but we also should not overlook the negative impacts of Internet (and entertainment). Through my own observation, a universal phenomenon of superficial thought and decreased adult sense has arisen in the generation born in the 80s and 90s worldwide; thus, this basic fact makes it necessary for us to reflect on the basic functions and values of Internet (and entertainment) in our societies.

 (I) Firstly, aboutcooking-one important life skill of adults, the common habit of young people isto search for the specific processes of certain dishes online, but for the previousgeneration, they often began to independently do the cooking at the age of 20or so and accumulate much related experience in practice, such as cutting meat,characteristics and cooking methods of various vegetables, using approaches ofmany kitchen appliances, etc; in fact, these cooking skills are all somewhat complex,for instance, it will take us a number of years to proficiently and finelymaster cutting meat and vegetables, however, generation born in the 80s and 90soften believes that they have already well learned these skills after finding someone-sided, virtual information on the Internet, and they do not know that itrequires repeated practice to truly master them. To sum up, our previousgeneration finally manages to integrate all the cooking skills and form a somewhatfull, mature understanding after much practice and long-term accumulation(including many false operations), in fact, a lot of experience and details ofthis process can not be found by simply searching for information online, and wecan only learn such experience by personally doing them. The range of cookingis actually very broad, including a lot of experience and tips with numerousoperation details, and we need to be familiar with the whole process and manydetails of dozens of dishes, and accordingly, it often takes us about 10 yearsto well grasp the whole thing. We cannot say that the younger generation’scooking skills have completely declined, and most of them still possess somerelevant skills, but their related experience is often less mature, deep anddetailed than the past generation.

Meanwhile, on the overall understanding of tastes and features of various dishes, the younger generation is also less mature and steady than the elder one, although most of them love delicious food. Our previous generation often knows much about the tastes of all kinds of food, and mostly, their understanding is mature, while the younger generation usually prefers to pursue novel dishes and many of them do not have enough interest and proper tastes for the past common food. 

In the real life, the young generation nowadays often goes out to the restaurants to eat, but our past generation rarely eats in the restaurants outside, and normally cooks at home for eating, at least women are so (and most teachers of the past generation also cook at home for eating), while in the new generation, people who can cook greatly decrease, of course, they are not completely unable to cook, but can only do a small part, and there are two reasons for this: firstly, our young generation becomes lazy, because most of our past generation are somewhat traditional and hard working, and they also usually have sense of family responsibility, thus, they will not be too lazy, while for this generation, because they are addicted to smart phone and also watch many entertainment shows (including men and women), resulting that they are mostly somewhat lazy; in the past generation, perhaps some men cannot do the cooking, but at least most women will cook at home for eating after marriage, while for this generation of women, due to smart phone and entertainment shows, they become not traditional enough; secondly, the generation nowadays also becomes gluttonous, and many young people think that the food made in the outside restaurants are more delicious than those made at home, while our past generation donot care much about personal enjoyment, and they will not care life style so much like young people and they are more traditional, steady and diligent. To sum up, the range of cooking and hands-on ability is actually very broad, and is also complex and delicate, not so simple; I think our young generation needs to less use smart phone and care more about practical experience like cooking and hands-on ability, and if one person is addicted to virtual space like Internet and smart phone and do not face serious family responsibility, and evade many family affairs he should bear (including men and women), then it is a bad behaviour for adults.

(II)A similar basic change also happens in the aspect of road information. Searching for road information by Google map and GPS navigation has gradually become the chief way for young people to travel, but for the past generation, they have to learn a great deal of relevant information by heart, such as the name of frequently visited streets and iconic buildings, since they do not have Internet and GPS navigation then, namely, they learn these information by experience. In brief, people of the new generation become mentally lazy due to the emergence of Internet, and they are not willing to remember, analyze and integrate relevant traffic information in their minds and show a tendency to overly rely on computer technology in this aspect as well.

(III)About many places in life, like restaurants, supermarkets, government institutions, pharmacies and hospitals, generation born in the 80s and 90s also often overly depends on the Internet. For instance, people of our previous generation usually know many restaurants, stemming from long-term experience accumulation and careful thought, and they are familiar with the famous dishes and chief features of these restaurants, while the new generation, to some extent, excessively relies on the disordered online reviews. The younger generation’s understanding of other places in everyday life, like hospitals, is also often superficial and vague, which is hard to avoid due to lack of practical experience.

  Since people of the younger generation spend much time in the virtualcyberspace, and their practical experience in real life, like eating in therestaurants, shopping in the stores and interaction with relations and friendson the same occasion, has somewhat declined (similarly, people of the pastgeneration have many more actual experiences in going to hospitals andgovernment departments), and they do not have broad and active actualactivities, namely, they achieve self-development by absorbing virtualinformation on the Internet, like images, videos and texts, not by actualobservations and rich real activities. The value of these virtual informationis surely far from real experience, which often creates a universal lack ofpractical experience among young people.

   (IV)Broadly speaking, the younger generationoften gets information from the Internet and such virtual information does nothave sufficient actual empirical background, which results in a universal lackof life experience among them. In particular, most young people donot know theexact ripening time of many fruits, like apples, strawberries and grapes (they doknow something about these things, but their understandings are usuallyone-sided and superficial). Take buying clothes as another example, the youngergeneration is always keen on buying clothes online and are more passionate aboutit than the past generation, but their particular understanding of clothes(like style, material, quality and many other aspects) is probably less maturethan the elder one.

   Asa specific feature, young couples’ rooms are usually messy, and only few ofthem are somewhat clean and tidy, while our previous generation’s rooms areoften neat and cleaned up (cleaning the rooms requires patience and hands-onability, meanwhile we need to clean them every now and then, so it is not thatsimple). People of our previous generation are usually confident about theirlife experience, like different approaches and time control of cooking meat, treatmentsof certain diseases, clearing the rubbish, water and electricity operations anda number of other things, while the new generation often does not have enough self-confidencein this direction.

  The contents of life experience are actually very complex and detailed,and in many cases we have to repeat for many times to truly master them (like thestyles, prices and characteristics of various sweaters and shoes), andmeanwhile, it needs an adult to be familiar with most contents of all the majoraspects in life, therefore, we need a long period of accumulation, thinking andpractice to integrate these complex elements and become mature. Life is anorganic whole and we can truly mature only after being familiar with all itsaspects, including cooking, road information, drugs, politics, economy, personalrelations, household life, rituals, ceremonies and etc, and these aspects are oftenclosely intertwined and are all indispensible parts of our life.

 （V）As a natural outcome, young people’s understanding of medical issues also has somewhat dropped. We all have various diseases in our life, like high blood pressure, hyperglycemia, gastrointestinal diseases, etc; and they involve digestive system, cardio cerebrovascular and many other aspects. People of our past generation often begin to accumulate lots of medical experience since 20 years old, such as roxithromycin can diminish inflammation and the treatment of children’s diseases, etc, while the younger people often search for treatment of relevant diseases online only when they are sick, and thus, their medical experience has two basic features: firstly, fragmentary; secondly, virtual, lack of actual feeling and empirical analysis (for instance, high blood pressure sometimes is caused by eating too much salt, drinking wine may also lead to high blood pressure, diabetes often begins at 40 years old, etc), thus, they cannot integrate the analysis of various diseases and form a holistic understanding. In a word, most of our elders have rich experience in medical issues, like the drugs and treatments for common diseases, while the younger generation often resorts to unilateral information on the web, which naturally leads to their inexperience in this respect.

（VI）Meanwhile, young people’s understanding of human relationship also, to some extent, declines. Since many young people are usually fond of the Internet and other things in the virtual space, they do not have rich personal interactions with the past generation, and mostly, they just communicate superficially with their peers, which undermines their adult sense. We can gradually become mature in human relation only by broadly interacting with mature people, and lots of deeper human skills can only be learned practically; many occasions of interacting with mature people have a wide range of subtle information, and we cannot learn them by simply reading or watching videos through the Internet.

   Asa natural consequence, young people’s understanding of politics, economy, administrationand related issues also has somewhat declined, and the past generation areusually mature and experienced about them, while the younger generation’s viewsare often superficial and one-sided.

    (VII) Simultaneously, the young generation’sunderstanding of traditional rituals and tradition notions also has dropped. Inhuman society, traditional ritual is a basic thing, and there are manytraditional rituals in our everyday life, while all rituals also have complexprocesses, for instance, in spring festival, from the first day to the seventh,there are different arrangements, and Thanksgiving also has rich content, butsince the younger people are fond of the virtual cyber space, they lack richactual activities, while for traditional rituals, they can only be learnedthrough actual activities, and people can then have deep direct experience, asa result, the younger people’s overall understanding of them naturally drops,and I think we need to pay sufficient attention to this universal negativephenomenon. An easily observed fact is that the younger generation’s holisticunderstanding of many rituals, like funerals, probably also declines, andclearly we can become truly mature only by attending many solemn occasions,like weddings, and moreover, we need to actively observe and think in these variousoccasions; in fact, their processes and contents are rather complex, and weneed to know a lot about them, therefore, these occasions are not so helpful ifwe just look on.

    Due to the young tendency of mindset,correspondingly, young people’s understanding of traditional notions isgradually decreasing. Our everyday life has a number of idioms, like “in theend things will mend”, “an ounce of luck is better than a pound of wisdom”, “cautionis the parent of safety”, etc; these idioms have passed the test of a long,long time, thus, are helpful for our everyday life. However, today’s youngpeople are somewhat unfamiliar with them.

    Tradition is undoubtedly an important partin both individual life and human society, and in a certain sense, onlytradition can make people mature and rational, and traditional rituals and notionsboth have rich contents, while both individual and society certainly live inthe past tradition, and one individual who has abandoned the tradition isalmost impossible to be mature in thought and character, and one society whohas abandoned its tradition is also almost certain to be a vulnerable andsuperficial society in many respects, like notion, emotion, custom and workstyle. We can easily see that, currently, our society shows a somewhatimpetuous tendency in some aspects, like sports, entertainment, thought andscience, and the major reason is naturally the overly young tendency in the newgeneration, while one important reason for the overly young phenomenon in thenew generation is that there is a large gap between their awarenesses abouttraditional rituals and notions and the past generation. To conclude, I thinkthe young generation needs to give enough attention to traditional rituals, traditionalnotions and etc.

(VIII)The universal decline of hands-on ability in generation born after the 1980s is also a deeply worrying basic fact. Since many young people enjoy spending time in the virtual world and they do not have enough hands-on experience, thus there is an overall decline in their hands-on ability. Indeed, they do have some hands-on experience, but their relevant ability is somewhat superficial and one-sided, not steady, subtle and all-round enough; we can only get good hands-on ability by a great deal of direct practice and few related activities are usually not sufficient. In real life, the range of hands-on ability is very broad, and most people of our previous generation spent over 10 years learning it, and they often started to do numerous hands-on activities at 20 years old (like assembling various electrical equipments with screws and screwdrivers, and much woodwork), while the new generation perhaps do not have some hands-on practice till 30, and therefore, they do not have rich hands-on operations in reality. An easily observed basic fact is that the younger generation’s awareness on many common things in life, like electrical equipments and sewers, also has partially declined. We think that an overall conclusion probably is: the hands-on ability of overly young individuals is almost sure to be one-sided and unlikely to be all-round and steady.

    These issues discussed above are notisolated, in fact, they are closely interrelated and always reinforce one another,which naturally leads to a universal lack of life experience among the younggeneration. The underlying overall reason is quite simple: the virtualinformation online is indirect experience, and its value is a little bit lowerthan the direct experience from real life.[1]

    The discussions above are mainly about lifeexperience, and we can feel some negative impacts of Internet and relatedthings, at the same time, in the conceptual level, Internet and entertainmentalso give rise to many somewhat negative basic facts.

    (IX)To begin with, due to the wide impact of Internet and entertainment, people areincreasingly enthusiastic about the notion of love. For people born before the 1950s,their notion about love is usually mature; although they also discuss lovebefore married, their notion quickly changes into marriage after that and themain part of marriage is to live together and undertake mutual responsibility,while the young generation seems to continue talking about love even after theygot married, which rarely exists before. If we read Tolstoy’s novels orShakespeare’s plays, we will find that for people lived in the 18thand 19thcentury, their chief notion would automatically change intomarriage after married, while for young people growing up with Internet andentertainment, they seem to keep talking about love even at their 30s. Obviously,the chief reason behind it is the partially superficial characters and ideas ofpeople born in the 80s and 90s, and some mature notions, like familyresponsibility and relate ideas, are unlikely to emerge in young people’s minds,while for our previous generation, these basic awareness will naturally arise.In brief, the popular notions in all societies around the world (from Europe,Asia toNorth America) have a simultaneousdecline in the past three decades. The common phenomenon of older single menand women in all countries is probably related with the ever-rising expectationof love.

     (X)At the same time, the ever-growing discussion about happiness and joy is also acommon phenomenon in the Internet and entertainment age. In our age, it isquite a landscape that books like ‘psychology for happiness’ are widely spread,and these books’ contents are mainly didactic instructions, like how to dealwith certain setbacks, and often aimed at young people in their 20s or 30s, andI think a mature, steady people doesnot need too much such naïve psychologicalinstruction. In the past ages, people also pursue happiness and joy, but theyare unlikely to discuss them all day, and for people born before the 1960s,even if they pursue happiness, they will mainly find mature pleasure in theircareers, but the young generation nowadays often pursues some relatively short-term,superficial goals (for example, they will ‘find happiness’ after going to amovie or a trip).

     Among some of today’s young people (menand women), they will regard “enjoy life” as their life’s chief goal, which isalso a basic phenomenon hard to happen in the past generation, because mostpeople of the past generation are all somewhat traditional in thought awarenessand living idea, and what they usually think are mostly various somewhatserious issues like family responsibility, life experience, work affairs and socialphenomena, though they will also talk about “enjoy life”, they won’t see it asthat important, and at most regard it as a small part of life, and most womenin the previous generation are also like this. But, some of today’s young menand women attach importance to various kinds of enjoyment, and they will thinkthat driving car, travel, delicious food and various kinds of fun are the lifegoal, which has a somewhat big difference with the life concept of most peopleof the past generation (the reason is, some young people nowadays indeed do notknow much about cooking, hands-on ability, traditional notions, work affairs,and so on).

    （XI）The overly young tendency in entertainment is also a significant basic fact in contemporary society. Nowadays, many kinds of entertainment shows can be easily found online, and they all have wide audience, while movies and songs with mature contents and deep ideas often only have limited viewers. When people search for movie stars and TV stars on the Internet, they usually prefer some younger, prettier faces, and do not have high enthusiasm to those mature, steady ones, which naturally causes the overly young tendency among movie stars. Meanwhile, as we can easily observe, contemporary singers are also young oriented, while singers before the 1950s are relatively more mature. Namely, there is an overall overly young trend in all entertainment areas, including movie, popular music and TV, which is somewhat bad for the fostering of mature personality in the society. For our past generation, after they enter middle age in their 30s, many of the stars they familiar with are middle-aged and old age people, and the singers they know are also often somewhat mature singers, and they are not very keen on young actors or singers, and what they usually watch are also mostly somewhat traditional TV shows, which is quite different from the young generation.

    With the expansion of entertainment, fashionmagazines and clothes also have wider audiences, and these fashion magazinesoften advocate young, pretty lifestyle, which is not sufficiently mature and austere;there also exists fashion in the past societies, but today’s fashion is gettingmore and more young people oriented, which naturally causes the superficialtrend in all aspects of our societies. To sum up, these phenomena inentertainment together negatively affect contemporary society to a certaindegree.

    People of our past generation also naturally talkabout movies and TV series, but most of their discussed topics are formal,while the young generation is willing to talk about the trivial things of somestars’ life, which can satisfy their curiosity; meanwhile, the main purpose ofour past generation’s watching TV is probably to expand their life experience,while many young people will watch TV for entertainment and leisure and theyoften talk about many entertainment topics in gathering, which seems unlikelybefore. Because in contemporary entertainment, like TV series, movie andpopular music, many of them use love and happiness these two basic concepts asthe central themes, and they repeatedly talk about these delightful elements andevade some more serious topics, like responsibility, mature personality andpractical experience (in fact, they are just common notions before), and thus,young people excessively caring about these topics are unlikely to have maturethoughts, character and living ideas. In summary, people of the younggeneration often overvalue the meaning of entertainment in their life. 

    (XII)Another negative impact aboutentertainment is that in TV series and entertainment, it seems that people canlive well without going to work, and TV series rarely discuss about work,conversely, they just focus on elements of love, happiness, travel, having fun,etc. Nowadays, some young people frequently change their jobs and they do notsee work as a basic responsibility for adults to support one’s family, and intheir minds, they seldom seriously look at family responsibility. Work oftenrequires numerous experience accumulation and the assignment is usually heavy, andmany jobs require both excellent expertise and mature life experience, and itis certainly the issue every adult should most care about, but our young people’sattitude towards it is not enthusiastic, mature and serious enough. In summary,entertainment has a somewhat negative impact on young people’s notion aboutboth work and life experience, which are two major parts of life. Inentertainment, people seem to have much fun every day without caring about workand life experience, which quite fosters young people’s immaturity of thinkingand character.

    (XIII) The young generation’s understandingof travel is also somewhat different with the past generation. People of ourpast generation also travel for many times when they are young, but they willnot pay too much attention to it and see it as an important part of life, whilesome young people seem to think highly of travel and they think that travel isimportant for their life. The reason is that our past generation often havesense of family responsibility and sense of life experience, while the younggeneration’s sense of family and marriage has somewhat dropped, and they oftendo not have enough sense of family responsibility (mainly for their children),but mostly think about their personalpleasure. When our past generation talk about travel, they will mostly discussmany issues related to life experience, while the young generation seems to paymuch attention to the aesthetic feeling of travel (this phenomenon is probablyrelated with social media) and they donot care much about many issues of lifeexperience in the journey, while our past generation will also partly discussthe aesthetic feeling of travel, but it is usually based on mature lifeexperience. In summary, the travels of our past generation when they are youngare based on mature character and sense of family responsibility and one of themajor purposes of their travels is to expand their life experience, while theyoung generation’s travel seems to change into a way to pursue happiness.

    (XIV)Thewide spread of online games is also a universal fact in generation born in the80s and 90s. In past societies, people do not play games too much after theygrow up, but due to the impact of Internet, it becomes normal for people evenat 30 to play games online. The online games mostly donot include rich, deepideas and valuable experience, and also lose touch with reality. As a result, theprevalence of these online games enhances the universal shallowness of thoughtsand emotions in the entire young generation. The insufficiency of adult sense andthe prevalence of online games are interrelated and they also mutuallyreinforce, namely, the prevalence of online games intensifies the youngtendency in character and the young oriented character further enhances theprevalence of online games, which forms a somewhat vicious cycle. In brief, Ithink we need to realize its deeper harm as soon as possible.

   （XV）As an outcome of the entertainment age, raising pets also emerges worldwide. In the past societies, some adults also raise pets, but this behavior is not so popular as our age, and moreover, in the past, people chiefly raise adult dogs, while today’s people also raise more little animals, like cats and little dogs, and they believe that raising such animals represents their sense of responsibility, and diverts themselves from loneliness, but they are afraid to face more serious topics, such as carefully raising kids, taking good care of parents and so on, which is a natural effect of the shallowness in character and personality of the entire generation.

    (XVI)In the meantime, the emergence ofsocial media also gives rise to the overly young tendency in people’s mindset.In social networking, young people is the major active group, and adults over40s usually do not spend too much time in it, which leads to the shallowness ofits contents (since young people don’t have enough mature, solid life and workexperience). In social networking, people like posting some pretty pictures,not the mature, steady ones, which creates the relatively naïve mindset amongyoung people; at the same time, social media will turn people’s attention to pleasant,shining things and generates a dislike of more austere things like manual labor,which will foster some negative basic characteristics, like laziness and indolence,in the new generation.

    Dueto social networking, people like posting some beautiful, lovely pictures onthe web to attract their friends and colleagues’ attention in order to get somesense of psychological satisfaction; meanwhile, they also frequently expresstheir current work and life conditions in social media, and these complex(usually trivial) information will constantly disturb and distract theirattention, and thus, social media often gives superficial satisfaction to manypeople and makes them unable to do some long-term, truly valuable work and formdeep, mature understandings of their life and work, and therefore, we think socialnetworking partially gives rise to the fickle character among young people.

     (XVII)Interestinglyenough, the parody pictures online also represent some basic characteristics ofthe Internet and entertainment age. Broadly speaking, these parody picturesarise from a degraded sense of humor; as we all know that adults’ sense ofhumor is usually based on mature wisdom and rich life experience, while theparody pictures are often based on the special mindset of young people, and theydo not require the depth of characters and ideas, moreover, their contents are alsolikely to be vulgar. Therefore, the popularity of such pictures is also keepingpeople away from mature personality and mindset.

     (XVIII)Meanwhile, if we further expand ourhorizon, we will find that a wide range of information online is overly young,like many forums and websites, since young people are clearly the major active groupon the Internet, and these overly young information (like pictures, articles, videosand forums) usually does not contain solid direct practical experience and manyviews are somewhat radical and unilateral; since life is complicated, it is notthat evident and direct; life includes a lot of compromises, polish and deeperwisdom, and the rich understanding of complicated life can only arise fromliving actual life experience rather than the indirect information from Internetand entertainment. In a word, the overly young tendency of Internet’s contentsalso partially enhances the shallowness of ideas and characters of the young generation.

    Because there exist many forums and socialmedia online, and young people also like browse them and spend much time inthem, therefore, it leads to a prevalence of network language and networkmindset. When many young people nowadays talk, they will use quite a fewnetwork language, while almost all the network language are obviously overlyyoung and superficial, not serious and mature enough, and the language our pastgeneration use when speaking are often language which has been used forhundreds of years, while when many young people nowadays speak and write articles,it is often mingled with quite a few cyber language, and these cyber languageare all naturally somewhat superficial, not formal and mature as the previouslanguage, which also results in the universal superficiality and naive in theyoung generation’s thought and character.

     (IXX)If we do some observations andthinking, we can find that due to the emergence of Internet and smart phone,most young people often use them as a tool for entertainment and leisure, whilefor our previous generation, they also have some leisure, like watching TV, butthey mostly see these activities with a somewhat mature attitude, and exceptthem, their will use most time to think about various kinds of problems in workand life. But due to Internet, the young generation can play games, watchvideos, watch TV series, listen to music and browse social networking online,namely, they can take much leisure on the Internet, which directly leads to ahuge decline of their attention about real life experience. In brief, Internetgreatly increases people’s leisure activities, which often creates theinsufficiency of adult sense among most young people, and their attitudes towork and life are often not mature enough, and their thinking about many kindsof life experience also greatly drops.

     (XX)Finally, we also want to discuss aboutwhat happens in academia, and the problem is also similar. Take themathematical world as an example, the research of the several generations bornbefore 1965 is good, for example, there are many good scholars in themathematical world in 1980s, but the research of the two generations born after1970 is much worse, and the number of top scholars dramatically decreases (mostare ordinary scholars), and it is true in both the US and China. Some peoplesay that it is because mathematics becomes harder, which is naturally not afact, because the mathematics of early 20thcentury was also hard,and the fields many scholars then worked on, like Lie group and Riemanniangeometry, are also deep, and they are not easier than current research, andsome people say that it is because of the pressure of the tenure, but thepressure of the tenure at 40 years ago was also not small. If we say thatmathematics becomes harder, what about history and philosophy? We cannot saythat history and philosophy also become harder, but there are only few goodscholars under 45 years old in American historical and philosophical world nowadays(most are also ordinary scholars), and their research also has a large gap withpeople born in 1950s, and similarly, in today’s American economic world, peopleunder 45 years old are also almost all ordinary scholars. In fact, many aspectsof every generation, like ability, are similar, but the impact of Internet,smart phone and entertainment leads to a decline of overall ability and adult sensein the new generation, and also leads to a great drop of research quality inacademia worldwide.

    We can think that, for the severalgenerations born after 1970, in nearly all the academic fields, from scientificfields like mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science to liberal artfields like economics, politics, history, philosophy, law and sociology, theirresearch quality all has a somewhat big drop. There are two major reasons:firstly, academia is part of the society, and thus, academic research willnaturally be influenced by the overall social condition in many ways, forinstance, for a computer worker, his thought will be influenced by many aspectslike politics, economics, society, culture, entertainment (TV series, movies,etc), athlete, life experience, while since in the above various fields oursociety is becoming superficial, which naturally results in the universalsuperficiality in the young generation of computer workers’ thought andcharacter. Secondly, today’s young scholars’ reading span and depth also has abig drop; take philosophy for example, the young philosophical scholarsnowadays will also read some books, but their reading range is quite narrowercompared with the past generation, and they also do know some famous scholars,but their understandings of these scholars are often somewhat superficial andone-sided, namely, compared with the previous generation, the young generationof scholars’ reading breadth and depth these two basic aspects both evidentlydrop; take mathematical research as another example, the young generation ofmathematical workers also do know some mathematicians, but the number ofmathematicians our past generation of mathematicians know is much more, andmeanwhile, their understanding degree is more all-round and mature, while thenew generation of mathematical workers’ understandings of past mathematiciansare not objective and mature enough, namely, the young mathematicians’ readingbreadth and depth these two aspects also have a somewhat big drop. To sum up,due to the combined effects of many important reasons, the overall quality ofacademia in many countries nowadays all has a big drop, which is a fact we needto alert.

     (XXI)Tosum up, we can probably say that, due to the comprehensive effect of manyreasons, in all countries, the ideas, characters and living notions of mostpeople born before 1965 are very mature, while the ideas, characters and livingnotions of the majority of people born after 1970 show a somewhat overly youngtrend, which is naturally an important fact.

    These impacts of Internet and entertainmentdiscussed above are usually interconnected and the superposition of so manynegative basic impacts naturally does great harm to young people’s thinking ability and adult sense. Life isbroad, while, for people of the new generation, they perhaps focus too much on theInternet and entertainment (including online games, social networking, love,happiness and many kinds of entertainment), and meanwhile, they just have a somewhatshallow and narrow understanding of other aspects in life, including politics,cooking, household life, hands-on practice (like fixing electrical equipment),road information, everyday experience and many other things, and the negative impactsof these basic changes are huge and I think we should pay sufficient attentionto them.

    The overall fall in thinking ability andadult sense among young people is an easily observed basic fact, and the causeof such an enormous change is clearly not unilateral, because the popularity ofraising pets, valuing travel, loving to play, unfamiliar with cooking, prevalenceof online games, the drop of hands-on ability, the insufficient understanding oftraditional notions, wide use of social media, many-sided deficiency of livingexperience, the wide use of Internet language these a dozen of aspects willinteract and mutually reinforce, and each of these more than ten phenomena hasa somewhat deep and broad impact, and thus, the integrated effect of thesuperposition of these aspects is naturally beyond estimate, and therefore, theoverly young tendency emerging among the young generation is actually somewhateasy to understand. In brief, due to the combined impact of Internet andentertainment, the ideas and adult sense of some young people in all countrieshave somewhat degenerated over the past decade or so, which has already becomeone of the key issues in contemporary human society.

    Meanwhile, we need to add that Internet, asa remarkable new tool, has brought not only negative impacts, it also hascreated a number of enormous positive effects.

    (XXII)Inparticular, the younger generation often has a better understanding ofelectrical products than the elder one. People of our previous generation are oftennot proficient in operations of electronic products, including smart phones,laptops and digital cameras, while the younger generation is much better atusing them, which is certainly a fascinating positive impact of the Internet.The younger generation often masters much information related to the electronicproducts, including computer hardware, complicated operations of smart phones andportable power supplies, in other words, they are familiar with a variety ofelectronic products.

    (XXIII)Meanwhile,Internet also has speeded up the spread of all kinds of knowledge and greatly improvedthe professional expertise, creativity, and comprehensive ability of manyindividuals. For employees in various areas, like electronic engineering, economy,law and medicine, Internet greatly speeds up the spread of their professionalknowledge, and enables people to get a wide range of professional material andabsorb much non-professional knowledge, and the wide spread of these importantknowledge and ideas provides a broad, solid foundation for potentialinnovations and developments in all fields. It is well-known that we can find muchinformation on the web, including politics, economy, history, geography,science and technology, and moreover, these knowledge is usually systematic anddetailed, thus, it can provide rich nutrition for people’s self-development.

   (XXIV)Furthermore,some tools in Internet, like email and MSN, have changed people’s way ofcommunication. With the emergence of such marvelous tools, people can moredeeply and freely communicate much information about life, study and work, and moreover,such communication becomes more active and extensive; since the contents oflife and work are both complex, we need to keep different levels of emotionaland intellectual contact with our friends, relations and colleagues in manyways, while Internet enables people to more diversely and convenientlycommunicate with each other. Human is a group animal and each individual alwayshas intricate work and life linkages with his colleagues and relations, andmeanwhile he also needs to get a lot of knowledge, ideas, experience and emotionalsupport through communicating with people surrounding him; thus, intellectualand emotional communication is a basic part of every individual’s life andwork, and Internet has created a significant positive impact to this aspect.(Here, Internet plays a similar basic role as phones)

   (XXV)Meanwhile,Internet also improves people’s way of learning. With Internet, people can moreeasily find professional material (for instance, by Google Scholar), while inthe past, we could find these useful materials only in magazines and books, andmeanwhile we can also find more information of relevant literature (likecitation years and citation numbers), which is very helpful to people’s dailylearning. However, we also need to point out that learning is a complex processand Internet just helps people to more easily get relevant literature, but thisdoes not imply that we understand and digest their ideas and knowledge; truly understandingthese materials’ contents often requires long-term active thinking and it isthe real major part of learning.

   Atthe same time, there are also innumerable professional websites and forums online,all with much professional knowledge, and many people will share their own experienceof learning and work, and all of these will create fascinating positive effectson people’s work, learning and research. Meanwhile, we need to add that theredoes exist much knowledge and material on the web, but they will not make adifference if we superficially learn them. Communication through email is alsosimilar: if we just superficially communicate knowledge and ideas, they willnot have a productive effect, and fruitful communication is always based onsolid professional foundation. To sum up, Internet does partially improvepeople’s way of learning, but getting related information is just part of itand learning itself is still complicated, long and hard.

   Indeed,the issues discussed above are very common in the past societies, but wediscuss them in a new overall background, namely, the Internet and computerbackground, and these things are different in this new background, so thisessay is novel and original in this sense. Smart phone and PC have greatlyaffected people’s life and work, but for some young people, they do not useInternet as a tool for work, but use it for play and fun, and I think we needto pay attention to this fact. Moreover, I think we need to realize theimportance of life experience in information age because life experience isalways the major part of every individual’s life since ancient, and we naturallyshould not change our forefathers’ way of life in information age. To sum up, dueto the combined effect of Internet and entertainment, the thinking ability ofpeople born in the 80s and 90s has, to some degree, declined, and their adultsense is also somewhat deficient, which is an important fact that deserves ourspecial attention. In particular, the characteristic of young people’s mindsetis superficial and naïve, due to the huge decline of understandings in manymajor aspects of life, including cooking, life experience, hands-on ability,road information and human relation (their contents are all complex, thusrequire long-term accumulation), their thinking ability is dropping. At thesame time, the basic feature of young people’s characters is fickleness and theyoften cannot pursue some long-term goals. These two basic aspects are deeply interdependentand often reinforce each other. In a word, Internet doesnot promote the overallprogress of our societies, but instead, it leads to a partial degeneration ofthe entire generation, which is a somewhat unexpected basic fact. (Since all aspectsof life have a huge amount of information, like buying clothes and treatingdiseases, and young people’s particular accumulation in them has partiallydeclined, thus, the weakening of overall ability among young people is easy tounderstand) No doubt, our holistic view is not to abandon the Internet, and Internetis definitely a fantastic progress in human society, we just think that we needto give it a suitable position in modern society by careful consideration.

                                                                    Dec 21, 2017

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[1]About this point, we can refer to concrete arguments put forward bythe brilliant thinker Alfred Whitehead: “We neglect to strengthen habits ofconcrete appreciation of the individual facts in their full interplay ofemergent values, and that we merely emphasize abstract formulations whichignore this aspect of the interplay of diverse values.” “The general trainingshould aim at eliciting our concrete apprehensions, and should satisfy the itchof youth to be doing something.” “In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animalsbefore he named them; in the traditional system, children named the animalbefore they saw them.” “There is no substitute for the direct perception of theconcrete achievement of a thing in its actuality. We want concrete fact with ahigh light thrown on what is relevant to its preciousness.” SeeScience and the Modern World, ChapterXIII.