How has technology impacted your literacy?

Technology has impacted my literacy immensely. I wouldn’t be lying if I said that spark notes didn’t help me do well in AP Lit (especially Heart of Darkness, and the fact that they have videos). But not just spark notes, I often read on my mom’s kindle or my dad’s nook.

            It’s funny, a few months ago I saw a child reading a book, a real book, not on an iPad or another reading device. The child was trying to turn the page by sliding her finger across the page. The child looked exasperated, and had a look of “WTF?! Why won’t the page turn?” And that’s when it hit me. Children of this generation don’t understand what a real book is. They learn to read on an e-reader. The technology is so advanced that the children are not reading physical paper books. As a child, I learned to read with paper books. E-readers only came into existence a few years ago, and I have only just started reading on them.

            Often times for homework, teachers will ask me to do homework online on a website and email it to them. Currently in French, we are reading The Little Prince. Since the French department only has about thirty copies of the book, we have to read it online for homework. Back in the day, if there were not enough books for everybody in the class, people were not able to read outside of the classroom. But now with all of the technology, people are able to read with or without the physical copy of the book.

            Growing up, my parents always bought a New York Times every day. Now with the amount of kindles and nooks in my house, we just get it electronically. It saves paper, and frankly, it’s cheaper. Growing up, I would always look at the Times. Now, I’m lucky if I read the Sunday edition. It’s just not as easy to see or remember you have it if it is not in your line of vision. The only time I will every buy a physical copy of it is if something important happened, and I want to keep it.

            One thing that I like about e-readers is that when I go somewhere, instead of lugging books around in a bag, I only need one thing. It’s much easier and is saving my back.

            All in all, I think that technology has impacted my literacy immensely for both good and bad. But the way that the world is moving with the rapid increases in technology, I just have to go with the flow and deal with it whether I like it or not.