Recently, I was invited by a university to give a talk on the role of Koreans in a globalizing world. When I entered the auditorium filled with approximately 400 undergraduate students, I expected to face 800 twinkling eyes, full of curiosity and enthusiasm. Instead, I was met with 400 totally uninterested students, all holding on to a smartphone as if it was a sacred chalice or the Excalibur. I noticed most of them were busily transmitting text messages, tweeting and surfing the Internet. Few people raised their eyes to look at the guest speaker. 

Since I hated to see my audience preoccupied with anything other than my talk, I politely asked them to put away their smartphones during my lecture ― a fatal mistake. As soon as their smartphones were gone, the students suddenly become languid and lost interest in everything and began to fall asleep immediately. I believed my talk was not boring, considering the nature of the topic and an accompanying PowerPoint presentation that was designed to intrigue the young audience. Deprived of their smartphones, however, half of the students became restless and then fell asleep for the whole talk. At that moment, I realized I had only two choices: let them play with their smartphones, or let them fall asleep during my lecture.

Later, when I talked to my son about my unpleasant experience, he chided me, saying, “You should’ve let them use their smartphones, Dad. Their smartphones are their notepad and their encyclopedia. They may have wanted to write down what you said, or Google terms with reference to your talk.” Ah, so it was my fault! I did something incredibly stupid and inconsiderate. In the eyes of the students, indeed, I must have looked like a dinosaur on the verge of extinction that is not fit to live on earth.

Nevertheless, something still baffles me. How is it possible that the audience can both pay attention to a PowerPoint presentation, Google information, and jot down the speaker’s points simultaneously? I am also not quite sure if students really use their smartphones as a memo pad. Is it not true that many of them in fact simply read the news, update their Facebook, or text their friends, instead of listening to the lecturer?

Of course, I am well aware of the fact that smartphones have completely replaced many things now, such as landlines, books, libraries, TVs, calendars, telephone directories, alarm clocks, computers and so on. Is it normal, however, for you to become helpless and fall asleep at the very moment when your smartphone is taken away? At least, my non-electronic, print-oriented generation does not do that. Even if our books, memo pads or encyclopedias are taken away from us, we can still “listen and think” and try to learn from the invited lecturer. Obviously, however, the digital generation is unable to do that.

Granted that the times have changed and the paradigm has shifted, at least a basic level of human decency and decorum should be preserved. Sometimes, however, I have to lament the situation that such traditional human virtues are rapidly disappearing under the swift current of an inhumane electronic wave. I am also compelled to deplore the unbearable superficiality and frivolousness of the so-called electronic generation. It is precisely these half-asleep, flabby young people who create Internet heroes and blindly worship them, and who thus are easily manipulated by conspiring politicians and demagogues in our society.

Someone might argue that as we live in an age of electronics, youth addiction to smartphones and inability to pay attention to lectures is a worldwide phenomenon. Not quite so. When I gave a talk at George Washington University and SUNY/Buffalo this year, my audience showed respect and enthusiasm; they neither played with their electronic toys, nor fell asleep during my talk. The same applied to the times I lectured at the University of Tokyo and Peking University some time ago. Both Japanese and Chinese students were eager to learn and tried to appreciate the guest speaker’s talk.

Unfortunately, however, Korean college students generally seem to be reluctant to attend special lectures, except when the guest lecturer is a movie star or a pop singer. Hopelessly shallow and pop-culture oriented, they do not seem to be interested in intellectual topics. When students are forced to attend talks because attendance is mandatory, they simply fiddle with their electronic gadgets instead of engaging in the lecture. This is surely not a worldwide phenomenon then; rather it is a regrettable Korean phenomenon, which makes me seriously worry about the future of Korea.

Today smartphones are ubiquitous and rampant. And our young people may naively think, “What’s the use of a lecture when we have a smartphone that can tell us everything we need to know?” But there are things that machines can never do. Indeed, the world is rich with sources from which we can learn, and the smartphone cannot possibly substitute all of these. 

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.