That i feel like we're at a major disadvantage?

I agree with you. Technology is actually impairing our youth in terms of cognition: mental math is more strenuous and long term memory is suffering because of instantaneous access to the internet (sites that answer everything in a flash like google). Like i always say, humanity is becoming estranged from itself. Technology changes us.

I think it's important to look at the big picture here. Sure, some rich teenagers in the US might suffer from loss of productivity, but then huge masses of poor people now have genuine opportunity to change their lives. A simple, cheap cellphone or access to computers can help start a business or drastically improve the quality of life. This has proven to be the case in some of the poorest regions of the globe.

There is also the fact that not everyone can be productive or achieve their potential. Many people don't really have potential to begin with. For every Newton, you had hundreds of thousands of peasants who never achieved anything of great value aside from surviving. I highly doubt that anyone currently wasting their time on this site, including you and I, would be out there reinventing the world if there was no technology to distract them.

Technology: no. Social media: maybe, but still no.

One of the contributing factors to the success of the human species is our ability to communicate and cooperate. Technology and social media enhances those aspects, so in that way they are helpful.

On the other hand, so much technology is trivial and serves only to entertain, but it's so much fun. The same with social media; but what concerns me the most about social media, is the affect it can have on anti-social youth. In about ten years, the first generations of internet-babies will be (or should be) fully-functioning adults who are actively participating in the working world. It will be interesting to see how they turn out.

I have to disagree.

I was always that child that had to ask why, what or how. Even now, when I see a different looking rock or lizard I *have* to know what it is. However, I am young and I am not usually around a library or someone that is very well educated so what do I do?

I pull out my smartphone that did NOT exist ten years ago. I do this in school when the teachers ask questions that I can't answer, I do this everywhere. I have the world's information at my fingertips!

With technology, it is easier to access and share information and there are people contributing greatly to the world and changing the world every day with new and advanced inforation and technology, but they are the minority as they always have been. With technology it has finally become possible for humble, working class folk like me of mediocre origins to have the same access to knowledge as someone who can afford to go to an Ivy League school and can afford to get a higher quality education.

If anything, I think that we're at a HUGE advantage than our ancestors whose poverty often inhibited them from partaking in the same intellectual enlightenment as their wealthier counterparts and if there are people of our generation that can't appreciate the beauty in all of the vast amounts of knowledge that our new technology has offered then I would say tough luck to them! Ungratefulness for knowledge is nothing new!

While I could be precious and say that distractions only distract people who allow themselves to be distracted, the truth is that we're all victim to temptation.

I'd like to believe that, if given a mobile phone, Newton would have used it as a computer to further mathematics and physics rather than look up Liebniz on Facebook and type, "Ha! You look a dick in that wig" on his profile picture.

I think I agree with you but I do also worry about a generation that declares itself bored so often despite being the first generation with access to the whole world (via the internet). We have things previous generations would find utterly fantastic and look at what we use it for.

But then, I don't think it's any different than it's ever been. We're not all Newtons, nor can we be. He was exceptional and we still have exceptional people today, in just a small minority as we ever have.

Sorry for the confused reply, by the way. I couldn't make up my mind which angle to come in at, so I chose all of them.

I agree with you because I hate how our historians and our people are always so 'confused' and just amazed at how our ancestors built this, or planned that.

Change is hard, but it has never been an easy feat to change the world. It isn't any harder now than it was in the past. In fact, it should be easier with all the communication tools at our disposals.