TOEFL - Rate my writing

Hey,

I am pretty worried about my TOEFL score. I really need that 100-score to be able to apply for my favorite business schools. Would someone please help me with giving feedback on this writing task? Thank you so much in advance!

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
Technology has made children less creative than they were in the past

The New Year’s Eve of 1999 was something else. Not only would a new year start, but also an entire new era - a digital one. The technology has brought us joy, laughter and connection to the world. But on the other side several critical voices has been raised. Is the technology hurting us in the long run? To answer this question we need to break it down in small sub-categories. In this essay I will put my focus to eveluate if the technology is making our children less creative than they were in the past. I will argue for that this statement is not the case. That is because two reasons: First, I believe technology is only stimulating creativity and, Second, the fact that these statements only drag away focus from important questions concerned with the technology development.

Creativity is about creating. Creativity is about connect one thing with another and end up with a new function area. For kids this could be to mix ice-cream with meatball sauce or play soccer with hockey sticks. Technology is in no way ruin this! Technology is a new platform, a new method of doing exactly this! We should encourage our kids to explore, learn and understand the technology, and what it can do improve our living standards. That will create a new sort of creativity that are adjusted for today’s society. I understand that parents are worried when they don’t see their kids playing in the traditional ways anymore, but they have to understand that playing on an iPad, iPhone or MacBook is just as stimulating as everything else. This is a question about mindset of parents, and I believe it is much more important to change that instead of blaming kids finding new ways to do stuff.

For the second part, I would like raise some criticism against this statement. The statement is made in “blaming tone” instead of raise points that can lead to constructive discussions. It is very hard to measure creativity, mainly because no one can define what creativity really is. So how are we even able to do a fair comparisons to children in the past and children today? What’s sad with this is that is also takes attention from other very important topics. Even though I am very confident in that technology stimulates creativity, I do also of course see the problems technology brings to the table (and how that might affect creativity in the long run). What if kids are being caught up looking at a screen whole day and missing daily exercising? That is a REAL problem, and will affect so many more things than only creativity. These concerns we really need to tackle, but by saying stuff like “technology makes children less creative” just only drive the focus away.

So, to sum up. I believe technology is a good thing for the creativity, not the other way around. We should embrace the development, not try to steer it away. With that said, I see problems that come as a result of technology. I believe this problems should not be minimised and we should tackle them in a seriously manner. Anyhow, I do not think one of these problem are today’s generation of children are less creative than they were in the past. I was borne 30 years ago, how creative do you find this black-and-white text written in Calibri?

Gustav Morata
Columnist