Much has been made of higher education in recent years – whether about safe spaces or snowflakes. Most critics of today’s campus climate point out the undue influence of social justice on college life, recognizing that universities have often exchanged intellectual rigor with diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. Writing for the Claremont Institute’s American Mind, Max Eden argues that the cause of higher education’s decline is due to more than just the potency of bad ideas. For Eden, the university no longer forms students, but is itself formed by students into the image of the “metaversity,” an anti-institution comprised of social media, online forums, and the broader internet. If we are to salvage the university’s mission and students’ minds, then we will need to harness the power of the social internet in a way that inspires critical thought and meaningful conversation.
No More Mr. Nice Guy (or Girl)
Since he graduated from Yale a little over a decade ago, Eden has noticed a shift in overall mood. College students used to avoid pressing any claims to justice or truth, as Allan Bloom chronicled in the Closing of the American Mind, as an extension of the oft-cited mantra, “truth is relative.” Today, you’d be hard pressed to find students who ascribe to such value-neutrality on campus. To be sure, many affirm social justice measures for purely social reasons, but most truly don’t believe that the mission of the university can be neutral. As a result, to stand athwart the university’ ideological orthodoxy, even by some slight deviation, spells social suicide. As Eden’s wise friend tells him, today’s students are so unlike the Yalies of yesteryear because they are “the first generation of children that socialized in high school with Facebook on their iPhones.” It is no coincidence that this generation also seems less resilient than their predecessors, precisely because there is “no mediation of ideas” on the social internet, where a tweet is a thought and outrage is currency. To appeal to the ideological commitments of the youth (who have no qualms about punishing dissenters), universities are going with the flow – and being swallowed up by all that fluidity.
Digital Natives Without Borders
What happens when digital natives leave the digital landscape? Data on the effects of the “social internet” are still emerging, but so far the results aren’t reassuring. Gen Z is more likely than former generations to report mental health problems and social disorders. They are also more likely to cut off those with whom they disagree politically, religiously, or ideologically. The reasons for this are numerous, but one possibility is that our increasing ever-connectedness through digital media has, ironically, driven us apart by disconnecting us in real life. Interestingly, young people seem to sense the fatality of online omnipresence and gravitate toward greater absence – while Tik Tok draws a huge number of young people through its powerful algorithms, those same young people also feel the need to pull back socially. They want boundaries – in technology as in relationships – but they are doing so from the other side of online immersion, retroactively rather than preemptively. Future generations can stand to benefit from the recognition that these technologies aren’t going away, and might become even more immersive. The question for us, then, is how to integrate them into our lives appropriately in a way that reinforces reality. One way this can be done, Eden suggests, is through children’s original influencers – parents.
Mediating the Metaversity
Just as parents have assisted their children along the path to higher education by enrolling them in courses, sports and music lessons, so should they instruct their children in proper use of the internet. While it may be tempting to block digital access altogether, doing so might backfire on well-intentioned parents. Instead, parents should form children and young adults to be thoughtful and deliberate online citizens, capable of monitoring their own consumption and capable of treating it as simply one more “tool” in their intellectual toolbox. As the internet becomes even more enmeshed with our daily lives, it’s important to make sure life online stays subservient to real life. Instead of allowing our kids to pull inward, we should encourage them to press outward, as suggested by the etymology of the word “education.” We should direct our children toward good “influencers” who encourage “long, deliberative discussion and examination of interesting phenomena for no political purpose — simply for the pleasure of satisfying curiosity.” When we raise our children with the outlook that knowledge can be something other than a key to power and popularity, they will be free to grow beyond their impulses and to flourish as citizens and people.
