Shocker: academic thinks videogames make people dumb

GamePolitics was cool enough to introduce the world to Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein. In an interview with Canada, Bauerline talks about his ridiculously largely titled book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).  At one point in the interview, Bauerlein spouts that the “digital age” and its crazy contraptions like the Internet, blogs, and videogames has made us all idiots.

Something insidious is happening inside their heads. Young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture.

Emory earned his doctorate in English at UCLA, which clearly gives him the academic groundwork to write about the psychological and physiological ramifications that the 21st century has had on young adults. Fortunately for us, we’re too dumb to realize these things and therefore will stay in the dark forever.