English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

One often-heard concern that has gained a great deal of traction over the past decade by journalists and teachers alike is that our 21st century students, socalled “digital natives,” are increasingly distracted by portable media technologies. It seems as though popular media reports almost daily about the implication of our distracted lives, from a lack of social connections to decreased productivity. This rhetoric of distraction frequently posits tech-savvy millennials as mindless media-consumers—unable to unplug or power down.1,2 Books like Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation (2009), Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows (2011), and Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together (2012) warn of the negative effects of a digital world on our students’ social lives as well as on their ability to read comprehensively and think critically—two skills necessary to the composing process of any strong writer. Despite the popularity of these claims, there have been no empirical studies that show a negative correlation between both social and general media use and students’ writing performance. Why is it important to complicate the rhetoric of distraction? For one, educators across the country are paying attention to these reports. Many, as both Michael J. Faris and Lilian W. Mina show in subsequent chapters, take advantage of social media as a pedagogical tool critical to the development of student writers in a digital world. Others, influenced by what Chris M. Anson referred to as “concerns about the fragmentation of attention,” may banish the use of social media and portable technologies in the classroom altogether. Yet there has been little research on how the writing process has been altered or adapted

Chapter 13. The Rhetoric of Distraction: Media Use and the Student Writing Process