Reading Response "The New Literacy"

In the article "The New Literacy". Clive Thompson argues that despite what many people think about all the new social networking technology like Facebook and texting. Students today are actually becoming better writers as a whole instead of worse. In this article he advocates for the recent studies done by Andrea Lundsford that refute common thoughts that the newest generation is deluding English. According to Thompson, Lunsfords studies have shown that students today do more writing outside of the classroom than any other generation in America. She suggests that due to all the texting and writing to others, this new generation of writers are much more persuasive and overall better at writing for an audience, as opposed to the typical bland essay writing of the generations before. Lunsford even went so far as to suggest that students today are currently on the forefront of a "literacy revolution" caused by social networking. I think this article addresses some important issues and biases about social networking and the effects it has on todays students and our society as a whole. While I agree that our new era of technology has just as many ups as it does downs (if not more). I think to say that we are in the midst of a literacy revolution is overkill, and I disagree that students writing is necessarily getting better. While students writing today may be more persuasive and more conversational it's important to remember that their are lots of other types of writing. In my opinion the ability to write fiction and non opinionated pieces of writing may be waning. While facebook and texting might make someone better at persuasive writing, practice makes permanent and if persuasive is all you write it's probably not going to be easy for you to not subconsciously wiggle your opinions into your paper. If I'm trying to read something purely factual so I can try to develop my own opinions then I don't want to have someone telling me what to think or do. I also read a lot of fictional books and I know that if I was reading a book and the author was trying to insert their ideals and values into the text I wouldn't be as interested in it. It seems obvious to me that even if social networking has started a writing revolution it may be decreasing our competence in other areas. The bigger facebook and texting get the less we talk to people. I can guarantee that without texting we would talk to people more and without social networking we would feel the need to actually interact with people as opposed to just messaging them. Overall I think that while social networking might be changing how we write and encouraging students to write more often. Its important to be able to be diverse in our writings and be able to compose many different kinds of pieces, and we still need to remember to interact with each other in ways like really talking to people. No matter how primitive it might seem.