Sarah Harte: Critical thinking is alive and well — even if we spend too much time on our phones

UCC event hears it's undeniable that today’s youth spend a lot of time doomscrolling — and their attention span may be shorter as a result — but all generations are guilty of this

The recent symposium at UCC marked the 300th anniversary of the publication of 'Gulliver’s Travels' by Jonathan Swift — but it was all about contemporary ideas and issues. Picture: Charles Jervas

A school of thought argues that university students are increasingly disengaged from serious learning, with some struggling to read full books, preferring summaries, and relying on ChatGPT to extract information rather than acquiring knowledge themselves. The subtext is that intellectual development is dead.

Or perhaps the way younger people engage with and consume information has changed. And do we possibly tend to catastrophise, particularly when the background political and social mood is enough to make you want to go to bed and cover your head?

It’s undeniable that today’s youth spend a lot of time on their phones, so maybe their attention span is shorter as a result. They’re not alone. I’m waging a battle with this.

Esther McCarthy, my colleague, wrote a piece in May about how horrified she was to discover the hours she logged on her phone. 

A lawyer friend confessed he spends a huge amount of his life doomscrolling on his phone. Concerned, he started reading a novel to counteract this ingrained habit. Testing times call for extreme measures.

I asked for photographic evidence, as while he would have been compelled to read all those dusty old legal cases, the last piece of fiction he read by choice was likely the Famous Five. Were we a generation of towering intellectual colossuses back in the analogue days? Hmm. All I have to do is picture ‘the lads’ in the back row of our legal lectures and that notion is put to bed.

It’s reasonable to conclude that we all have reduced attention spans thanks to the more connected world we live in. Hence the ‘four-minute/two-minute read’ banners on some articles trying to lure us in.

And yet are our children a generation of dribbling, social media-addicted morons who don’t care about learning?

Cross-disciplinary conversation

Last Wednesday, I was invited to a symposium at University College Cork to join a group of people discussing Gulliver’s Travels for the book’s 300th anniversary. As someone who was once particularly drawn to 19th-century novels, I initially found Gulliver’s Travels a challenge and found myself muttering about tiny print.

The event was a cross-disciplinary conversation through the lenses of English literature, philosophy, and computer science, with participants handpicked by Vittorio Bufacchi of the Philosophy Department. Both lecturers and students filled the packed room.

I did my song and dance (as the only non-academic, I felt I was walking into a pack of wolves because those academics will spot any gaps in your syllogistic reasoning), but once that ordeal was over, I perked up, and my ears pricked up.

The occasion turned into a highly sharp, relevant debate about learning, the evolving human right to concentrate (thank you, Emma Dore-Horgan of the Philosophy Department), and the use of AI. Nothing ‘ivory towerish’ (a claim often levelled against academics) whatsoever about the discussion. Rather, it was a live example of applying knowledge to issues that concern us all, not least AI, a hot-button topic in workplaces globally.

Joel Walmsley (Philosophy Department) and Barry O’Sullivan (Computer Science Department) raised AI through the lens of Gulliver’s Travels. Yes, Jonathan Swift, in a way, foresaw AI, as unlikely as that might seem.

Barry O’Sullivan told us that John McCarthy, an American computer scientist, coined the term AI in 1955, and his father, John Patrick McCarthy, was from Cromane in County Kerry.

Question about AI 

During a Q&A, I asked a question about the use of AI at UCC, not expecting an answer. I prefaced the question by pointing out that this debate is taking place in universities globally. But lecturers in the room suggested there was a divide in thinking about how and whether AI should be sanctioned in UCC, with some higher-ups, if not quite gangbusters about AI use in university, then supportive of it.

Some lecturers in the room had a deep concern about this. Lines were delivered like ‘a wealth of information comes at the cost of your attention’ or ‘AI psychosis is becoming a phenomenon.’ What was heartening was that, at UCC, lecturers clearly feel they have the intellectual freedom to go against the institutional grain and that the free exchange of ideas and opinions still exists on campus.

At the end of the symposium, Mary O’Connell of the English Department announced a ban on students’ use of AI in the English department.

Three bright young spark students stood up and gave us a short presentation on why they passionately supported the ban. They said imagination and invention equalled human originality. They questioned where your own voice began and ended when you used AI. One said that they did not want to live in a world where human originality was scarce.

A student spoke up from the floor and said AI use wasn’t just causing tension between the faculty and the administration, but also among the student body, where there are apparently two camps, with some for its use and others firmly against it.

We can expect to hear more AI controversy and discussion of its uses across sectors in 2027.

University funding

Another knotty issue is the ongoing controversy over Government funding or underfunding of Irish universities. Last month, UCC and other universities challenged the Government on the latest budget, presenting their concerns to the Oireachtas.

The main disagreement is whether funding increases have kept pace with student numbers, inflation, staff pay, and the cost of maintaining university facilities.

Vittorio Bufacchi told me UCC has more than 26,000 students, which puts pressure on resource allocation. As reported in the Irish Examiner last month, student numbers at UCC have increased by 23.3% over the last eight years, by more than 50% since 2008, but that ‘State funding per student is 34% less now in real terms than in 2008’.

Overcrowding and underfunding

You can see the problem in the lecturer-to-student ratio and in our ability to offer top-grade facilities, basically an issue of overcrowding and underfunding. 

In strictly economic terms, our universities are assets that provide a public good. The labour market needs educated workers, but a market-logic credo that suggests we educate people only to supply workers for the fast-moving, competitive global marketplace is depressingly short-sighted.

We also need to fund and support Irish universities for other reasons, including social investment.

In a landscape where liberal democracy is being threatened, we need to produce independent critical thinkers who can challenge received wisdom and won’t be swept along on a tide of demagoguery without thinking for themselves. People who can challenge authority, as some of the lecturers at the symposium did.

A central question is what it costs the Irish State in the medium and long term not to fund universities properly.

Hope for the future 

On that note, last Wednesday’s Gulliver’s Travels symposium gave hope about academia, the younger generation, and the quality of teaching, intellectual inquiry, and intellectual freedom in Irish universities.

So maybe the kids are alright. And well done to all the engaged, generous-spirited lecturers in UCC whom I saw interacting with and guiding their students in intellectual conversation, producing the next generation of leaders and thinkers.