A few days ago while taking a stage to deliver a speech, TV personality Bill Nye collapsed before reaching the podium. Unconscious for a few moments, it was the audience's reaction that seemed to garner the most news.
Blog posts flew reporting the "bizarre" activity of the University of Southern California students gathered to hear him. It seems that instead of rushing onstage to assist, they whipped out their iPhones and began to tweet and record the incident.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101117/sc_yblog_thelookout/if-the-science-guy-passes-out-and-nobody-tweets-it-did-it-happen) which appeared on Yahoo! News' front page. Brett Michael Dykes reported that no help was offered initially as the students seemed more intent on being the first of their friends to get the scoop out on the net. Quotes of one student's observance that (he) "saw (other students) texting and updating their Twitter statuses" were made. I have to admit, after reading the account of the audience's callousness and lack of emotion, I was terribly uncomfortable as well. Dr. Gary Small's account in iBrain, http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Ibrain/?isbn=9780061340338 of the recent discovery of the underdevelopment of the human frontal lobe found in people born after 1980, came to mind. The frontal lobe responds to human emotions and controls communication processes. That scientists are recording this biological phenomenon and directly linking it to the simultaneous development of the Internet, loomed in my own brain, as it screamed "He's right, oh dear, he's right! I already envisioned an entire lost generation consisting of humanoids or human-like creatures who would go on to breed less and less recognizable offspring. The only comfort I could draw was knowing I'd be dead in another 30 years so wouldn't have to see the vacant, slightly disgusted look in my grandchildren's eyes when they gazed at their ancient, drooling grandmother.
I read the article through again however, and all the comments that were already loaded and being uploaded as I read. For sure, there were the majority of the usually expected "What is the world coming to" comments. Then, nestled in between and repeatedly surfacing, were actual, carefully crafted comments from a number of students who were there in the audience and had a completely different story to tell. They made the clear distinction that during the moments of shock that followed the collapse, not one person touched a phone. After the initial surprise wore off, they explained, stage hands and nearby personnel jumped onstage to help.
I went back to this article one day later to read it yet again, and sure enough, it had been updated to reflect the news that students were indeed confounded, perplexed and on the whole, not tweeting.
So what have we learned? We've learned that the media is as much a perpetrator of being the first among their friends to get the scoop out, without verifying the facts or cross-checking sources. So what can you expect from our youth?
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