[Suwan News = Unconventional Thoughts]According to the results of the “Program for International Student Assessment” (PISA), which evaluates 15-year-old students in OECD countries, the average literacy score for Korean students was 515 points as of 2022, showing a gradual annual decline from the 556 points recorded in the 2006 survey. Nevertheless, whenever concerns about declining literacy—such as misunderstanding “three days” as “four days” or misinterpreting the phrase “boring apology” to mean “having nothing to do, so it’s tedious and uninteresting”——such instances—the issue of declining literacy among the younger generation only briefly comes to mind when the topic surfaces; however, the discussion does not lead to efforts to identify the root causes of the problem or find solutions. What are the causes of the decline in literacy among the younger generation, and how is this related to the thoughtless behavior we see in students in today’s classrooms?
Since the smartphone revolution began in 2007, our lives have become completely immersed in the digital world. For the generation born and raised in a world where we think through smartphones, share emotions with AI, and where the rich emotional expressions unique to humans have been reduced to a handful of emojis on social media, digital media is not merely a tool to be “utilized”—it is an “environment” imposed upon them, and they are simply beings who must live within it.
We live within online networks using our smartphones and consume new content every day, but behind the pleasure of the smartphone, it is the form of the medium that exerts an even stronger hold over us. Sensational videos that appear at the touch of a finger, algorithms tailored to our tastes—these elements adjust our daily habits, regulate the speed of our thoughts, and shape the flow of our emotions. The problem is that when we view others through a screen, our awareness of them as multifaceted, emotional beings disappears, and we come to perceive them only as insubstantial, virtual, mechanical objects. Because of this characteristic, children—the new generation raised in the wake of the digital revolution—have undergone significant changes in their perceptions and attitudes toward others.
While the classroom is a place for social interaction, the space in front of a screen remains a private one. The classroom focuses on students’ intellectual development, but the screen forces them to focus on entertainment. Attendance at school is mandatory, whereas social media use is optional. While the concept of “public etiquette” exists at school, it does not exist when watching YouTube. In the classroom, fun is merely a means to an end, but in today’s digital age, fun itself is the purpose of all behavior. In learning, there are cases where the attitude formed through the learning process is more important than the content being learned. People learn by doing, and digital media such as smartphones teach children to behave in the classroom exactly as they do when using their smartphones. The scene we see in schools today is one where students are almost always talking, listening to music, and playing around without a care during class. This attitude, in which traditional public etiquette toward others has vanished, is a natural consequence of children growing up in a digital environment where the sense of interacting with others has disappeared.
By extending this line of reasoning, we can also infer the cause of today’s declining literacy levels. Today’s decline in literacy is not simply the “laziness” of students who are reluctant to study—a phenomenon that has existed in every era—but rather a mismatch between a body that has become unable to concentrate due to overstimulation from an overload of information and images, and a learning process that must inevitably rely on text. Children want to obtain information from books in a way that is “not boring”—just as they would get a hamburger, or just as they consume the short, stimulating images that flood YouTube—and it is impossible to meet this demand. According to 2024 data from Statistics Korea, 58.5% of married households with children under the age of 18 are dual-income households. As the time parents spend with their children continues to dwindle due to societal pressures forcing them to work, teachers are increasingly expected to take on the role of surrogate parents—teaching students the most basic social norms and providing personal and emotional support to teenagers who have received only minimal socialization.
For our generation, living in a society saturated with images—where we think through smartphones, share emotions with AI, and learn through social media—a decline in literacy may be an inevitable consequence. For children raised in such an environment, isn’t the demand from the adults who ushered in the media age—“Turn off your smartphones and read a book”—somewhat illogical? We can turn off smartphones, but we cannot turn off the environment they have created. If we want to see changes in children’s attitudes and literacy skills in the classroom and at home, we must focus on the media and environment in which they live.
Unconventional Thoughts
