Pop Culture Readings

I think Steven Johnson's book on "Everything Bad is Good for You" is a very interesting title and really draws you in. He mostly focuses on how technology and social media is actually beneficial and intelligent for us. This would be something that I would like to read more of. In this excerpt of the book, he speaks first on books and how these are beneficial. He also speaks on video games and the progress they have made over the years. A quote that stood out to me says, "It's not what you're thinking about when you're playing a game, it's the way you're thinking that matters". Johnson then goes onto explain this is not only pertaining to video games. This can relate to any time of learning that we are doing. It is through our experiences we learn, not only during the the time, but after as well. The learning goes beyond the actual experience. Johnson explains how games force you to make desicions. They force you to choose characters, choose moves, places, things, etc. The list goes on and on. No other form of "pop culture" makes you activate your desicion-making in the brain. This part of the article was extremely eye opening for me. I have a 16 year old brother, who is a video gamer, and I always looked down upon the fact that he loved it so much. I thought how boring, all you are doing is clicking buttons. After reading further in Johnson's article, I realize that even though it is just a video game, it is helping him to open his desicion making abilities, and for this I can come to terms with it easier. I also dated someone recently who loved playing Super Mario Smash Brothers, and I would get extremely annoyed when I was at his place and he would be playing and not paying attention to me. (Typical girlfriend reaction). Although, I can look at it at a better light now. I think this article was very interesting to me and actually one I understood!
The second part of the readings was a study done by Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson. It was about the impact on different TV shows on young children. As a babysitter, this was very interesting to me because I was intrigued to know if what the paretns are letting their children watch are actually beneficial to the children. I wasn't suprised, although, when the study showed that the children that were tested who watched the fast-paced television show did worse on the tasks that the other children.I know we have talked in class before about how Spongebob isn't good for children, so I enjoyed reading about this study and learning as well. This is definetly something I can apply to my life.