I had a professor, way older, talk at a great length about how his generation is more well read than Millenials. When it was brought up that our generation reads more, he literally came out of nowhere with “Well, that’s not the point. See, my generation was better informed. You kids don’t know what it is to actually sit down and read for information. This generation is the least informed of any previous generation! Other generations sat and read, listened to the radio for information. There’s access, but are any of you *actually* informed? No. If I wanted to know what happened in Finland to make it a country, I would go to the library, speak to another human being, and check out books to read on the subject. We were happy to do it.”
A girl a few seats behind me goes, “Bullshit. If I want to know that, I can Google that in a few seconds depending on my signal. I can youtube or Netflix a documentary on Finnish History. I can listen to podcasts made by Scandinavian historians. I can use Duolingo to get a better than basic understanding of the language, and use Amazon same-day to get a book in my hand by my last class of the day, delivered to the class. I can order Finnish food on my ubereats app, find a language partner chat app to video with people in Helsinki, use Google Earth to visit, patronise interactive museums, and stream the most popular films from the country *right now*. If I so desire I can take an opensource course from a highly accredited university about the same subject and apply to study abroad with a trusted program with the click of a button. I can use Tinder to find me someone there to get some with, I can buy plane tickets and find a top rated hotel for a good price with great reviews and stream their local radio stations with an app. I can buy train tickets, bus tickets and rent a car. We aren’t less informed. We just don’t learn things we don’t give a shit about or need just to say we did all smug about it. Stop sneering at us for the access your generation dreamed of giving us actually happening just because your old ass doesn’t know how to use it.”
