Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I'm not convinced by either claim.
In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If teens are more able to clearly and openly express the fact that they are sad, does that mean they are more sad? I think not.
Teenagers face far greater economic insecurity than before, and are more acutely aware of it. What will the workforce look like when they graduate highschool? Jobs that teenagers would have been invited to do are being replaced with automated checkouts and computer vision algorithms. Teenagers are required to go into more debt than ever, to escape this lack of opportunities via education.
The article identifies that today's teenagers: get in less car accidents, have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy, ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent - and presents this all as bad because it is different than what came before. Is it bad? Would people 20 years ago have thought this was bad?
The author expresses great surprise that people sleep with their phones beside their bed - whereas, it is a great surprise to me that she doesn't. It has an extremely useful function as an alarm clock.
I suspect that she would find that a vast majority of her generation of 47-year olds also sleeps with their phone within an arm's reach.
- pollution
- economic stagnation
- inflation
- antibiotics failing
- global warming
- debt
- automation and artifical intelligence
- politics failing to tackle those issues (its a circus in some countries)
- issues like Brexit
- natural disasters
- hard manipulation via mass-media
- addiction algorithms in modern games/medias/programs
- goverments cutting expenses on healthcare and education
And many more. Im surprised young ppl still have hope, thats very brave of them.
The process itself would be a range of options. From removing undue leverage that make people buy things they can't (or don't want to) really afford so they are reliant on rising property values, to absolute government intervention. Of course the most likely would be somewhere in between. Where the government by allocating resource (whether that is building permits, land or directly with construction) competes with the market.
And this isn't really the market not functioning as such. The market is accurately pricing things like housing high because of its importance. The problem is that eventually the market will also reflect the decreased competitiveness of important things being expensive.
Anyone who gets depressed because of Brexit is just looking for a reason to be depressed. It is the lowest-stakes political crisis I could imagine.
Maybe people are getting depressed about those issues; but the solution is read less news and need to get better at filtering out things they can't control. If you consider all the things that can go wrong there never has and never will be an era that isn't depressing.
The only things on the list that are problems are antibiotics, global warming and healthcare - all of which are risks of falling out of the golden age of the last century back towards something that could be considered the normal human condition through most of history. They are also all completely solvable problems.
Isn't this supposed to be good for us and make people's lives better? If that's not the case, then it's really something to be worried about.
At some point those changes will need to happen, as you say, but it would be better if we didn't reach the point of needing a revolution to get there.
We will probably reach a point the industry doesn't improve its survival ability by feeding and serving people. If that happens we will have reached a point where we do not have the ability to extract resources on our own since machines do all the critical parts of the job and we won't have the know how/or the access to resources.
Specifically:
- mining, farming and transportation is in the process of being automated away, as is manufacturing.
- in a world dominated by renewable energy, the cost of energy will depend on local weather. To optimize the logistic operations, we'll have to integrate weather predictions and adapt the flux of goods. Humans won't be able to compete with machines for that task, and logistics will also be automated away.
Once that part of the industry can work without human input, we'll be in deep trouble. The rest of the human economy is the result of accidental complexity due to the fact that meatware stems from biology.
This is the natural consequence of optimization and growth seeking. The only way to optimize human labor fast enough to be competitive is to optimize it away. If we're not economically competitive we will not survive. We are in the process of making ourselves redundant, and magic thinking makes us believe that it will end nicely.
Maybe if you only consider the first three bullet points. The rest of the list (maybe minus brexit) is decidedly more problematic today than it was 40 years ago.
Even then, it's arguable about "pollution". Sure, we've cut pollution greatly, but we're still learning how bad we actually screwed <strike>up our environment</strike> ourselves over and how difficult it is going to be to clean up.
And as dollar value influences pretty much whole world, it can be applied the same way in other countries.
Source: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1860-dollars-in-2017?amount=1
In comparison to what, exactly? Compared to another currency? Compared to itself?
If another currency, then great! We can sell them more stuff because our stuff is cheaper then their own stuff.
If compared to itself: so what? Inflation is a stated policy of the Federal Reserve. My dollars may be worth less, but I make more. This isn't a problem unless you issue loans and failed to charge enough interest.
The commentary in this thread just blows my mind. I'm astounded in an era of regular travel just how sheltered people in the West are.
Clear and statistically significant trends among young males:
* Younger generations have significantly better communication skills and ability to express themselves.
* More mental problems are reported and they cause more releases, but they are not necessarily increasing. Doctors are better trained to specially seek mental problems and take them more seriously. Other studies support this theory.
* On average young men are 7 kg heavier than in the 90's. Aerobic fitness is in rapid decline. Muscle strength has declined but only a little.
* IQ peaked in 1997 and has been decline but decline seems to plateau. Negative Flynn effect has ben observed in other countries as well (Norway, Denmark,Australia, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands).
It might well be, depending on the reason. We'd also probably see those effects if there was mass depression. Or if we simply locked up all teens at all times. What other "teen stuff" aren't they doing? Socializing (in person)? Exercising?
If people were more depressed, we would normally expect to see MORE of these risk-taking behaviours, not less.
And that's another thing, we shouldn't need social media to feel validated or to compare, people should feel accomplishment in solace of their hobby. Sometimes the expectations of having a huge following online can even have a negative effect on the mental health of online artists. I see many talk about their own struggles and the pressures of being creative (especially the ones who start to make a living off it).
You probably should be, because there are objective markers that don't depend on communication:
https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016
> The article identifies that today's teenagers: get in less car accidents, have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy, ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent - and presents this all as bad because it is different than what came before.
If teens are avoiding risk-seeking behaviour due to an increase in underlying anxieties, then yes, it quite literally is a problem and not just because it's different. Maybe you should give the psychologist who wrote the article the benefit of the doubt.
These are positive changes. All of them. These were literally something bad about older generation. All these things have negative consequences on not just risk accepting person, but also to other people around.
If you are more anxious but less violent, then it is a good trade off.
For instance, are you going to suggest people should become more psychopathic because it's correlated with success?
Are you going to suggest all men take testosterone suppressants because that would reduce violence, risk taking and teenage pregnancy? If the outcome is all that matters, then why not right?
If what you need is testosterone suppressant to not hit me, yes I strongly prefer you taking it over me being beaten or me doing things I did not wanted to for fear of your aggression. It is better for you too, assuming cops and courts will do the thing they are supposed to - putting you in prison.
Fortunately, men generally don't need testosterone suppressant to not be violent. Adult men violence is choice and occasionally mental problem.
Teen pregnancy rates are again result largely of sexual education, girls better able to resist pressure to have unprotected sex and boys better knowing it causes problems to them too. There is literally nothing to gain by not using a condom in that situation.
All of these are kids making better choices. That absolutely should count for something.
False equivalency. "More violent" does not mean "violent". Kids rough housing are technically being violent. Are you really worried about that?
> All of these are kids making better choices.
Or it's kids not having natural impulses that are inherent to all human beings. And that would be a serious problem.
Difference against violence of past generation is NOT kids rough housing. It was real fights, real hits, real injuries. Real robbery, real violence toward (say) partners, real knife or real gun. Nice manipulative technique you used. But you know what? If there are less kids bullying other kids, that is good thing too. Because while "rough housing" between two consenting kids is fine, one kid bullying the other is often called rough housing by those who want to pretend every thing is fine.
Keeping control over natural impulse to not use condom, to have random sex, to take heroin, to hit other people is a good thing. We have many natural impulses that are better off to be controlled. All of these harm not just the person who is doing it, but others too.
It's anxiety that drives national-socialists for example. Do we want them to rise again? I don't think so!
Also your example with the psychopath is a very good one. Success and money are not the most important things in the world even when instragram & co are bloated with pictures of "happy", rich, dumb people who have nothing but their looks.
If men wouldn't have taken risks probably they'd never have left Africa in the first place.
The graph of suicide rates linked goes back to 1999.
Suicide rate often tracks economic cycles - for example, the suicide rate was 50% higher in the 1920s than it is now.
Certainly among adults, but suicides among adolescents and teens tracking economic cycles? I'm skeptical.
Sometimes it blows my mind that even in "educated circles" of the west there's such a blatant lack of perspective on the rest of the world. We still live in a world where 3 million people a year die of diarrhea - and you think economic insecurity is the reason Western kids are depressed?
No, this is not why teenagers are depressed. If that were even remotely true every teenager on Earth not from a G8 or Scandanavian country would be jumping off a ledge by the time they're 14.
That does not make it impossible for rich countries people to be depressed due to economy going down relatively.
If they are up in the US it might be another cultural issue.
You claim 'working with teenagers over the last couple of decades' while making the delineation of 'her generation of 47-year olds'.
Even if you began working with teens at 20, 'decades' would put you in your 40's as well? If that is the case, why try and separate your self from the same demographic?
"In earlier eras, kids worked in great numbers, eager to finance their freedom or prodded by their parents to learn the value of a dollar."
They're driving less in the first place: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/05/teen-car-...
> have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy
They (along with 20-somethings) also have less sex period: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...
> ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent
Drug use and getting into fights typically happen in social settings. Teens are socializing in person less often: https://qz.com/1320344/americans-are-socializing-less-and-pl...
It makes you wonder, what the heck _are_ they doing with their time?
Well, playing video games, using their phones, and feeling lonely: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/01/loneliness-felt-...
As well as reporting more depression and anxiety, and committing suicide in record numbers: http://theconversation.com/the-mental-health-crisis-among-am...
Is it as simple as "phone bad, sunshine good?" No probably not, but there are studies out there linking social media to depression, and many studies linking loneliness to poor mental health.
You misread the article. Not beside their bed, but in the bed with them.
They tend to be better at communication with technologies but a lot worse in real face-to-face communication.
They stand some meters apart and rather text each other than standing up in front of a group of other people to just talk to the other person.
I also see greater economic insecurities but I don't understand how this is connected to less or later gains in self-sufficiency. Shouldn't it be reversed? In my time it was so important to get some extra bucks to spend on more/better clubs, booze and gas that we did nearly every shitty job to earn some.
What I think the article got right is the risks involved with this tendency towards less risk taking. Many activities we took part in our youth forced us to deal with unknown situations and people and we learned to cope with things. We spent hours at the riverside, in the forests etc. getting wasted, building stuff and doing nasty things that teenagers do - I think it was for the better of our development and a friend of mine who works with young people professionally supports this hypothesis.
When there are no insecurities and problems to tackle you don't learn to stand on your own feet. Learning to cope with stressful and strange situations and people at least helped me to find ways out of trouble instead of ending my life or get killed.
When we were bullied at school we met the bullies at the yard and beat the sh*t out of them instead of being overwhelmed by pseudo-anonymous groups of people on the net. I think that was easier as a mechanism of coping and at least you could do something about it.
I wouldn't underestimate the psychological stress they have to deal with nowadays and I think I also wouldn't want to switch positions.
I'm happy I grew up before this digital revolution just early enough to know the differences.
A better question is, is it art?
Is a gift in the form of a drawn picture for Father's or Mother's day?
Is Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?
Is a laptop with a plethora of malware a work of art?
It may not live up to your standards of quality, but that's up to everyone themselves to decide.
And a lot of it is interchangeable and repetitive - like all those Instagram photos taken in the same popular locations with the same few stock poses.
The same thing applies to music (generic watered-down techno with bass-drum-under-samples and maybe a bit of synth), visual art (digital paintings of pretty anime-influenced girls, lone heroic fantasy figures dwarfed by an impossibly huge menacing monster, relatively trivial generative code animations), and short movies (generic sci-fi settings and tropes, generic scripts, pro-quality CGI.)
Unusual talent, deep mastery of a medium with some awareness of its history, non-trivial content, and an original voice are very rare.
It's not that it's all terrible, but there's far more superficial trope mimicry than powerfully resonant original creative work.
To make a compelling argument, you have to show that it's somehow worse than it used to be. For my money, the peak quality now attained by art is definitely better than it used to be. Why, even just in music, within the past decade the musical genres thoroughly burst their banks and now I find most new music defies classification - I can only listen in wonder. Not all of it is good, to be sure, but vast amounts of it are at least interesting.
Kids today can create many things: mod games, work on scientific project even start businesses... Some voluntary work done by teenagers is surpassing professional companies in quality. Even taking pictures with phone creates something.
And with niche hobbies one can get at some level (for hobbyst) just by watching a few hours of youtube videos. Again it is not "consumption" but learning.
Gaming is the same thing, kids are learning cooperation, new skills, husttle etc.
It is not just media consumption. Computers and internet do not work the way books or TV works. It is dialog, two way communication that takes user feedback.
Nobody being creative you say?
Though I share skepticism on smartphones. Off to read a book to my daughter now.
There isn't enough research out there that distinguishes between different types of screen time.
At least, with phones, kids can talk to each other, write, take pictures, and eventually make apps. Try making an app on the Playstation.
For instance, IIRC, MIT or CMU reopened glass making factories that were retired. They too felt that people need some tangible work for their own good.
A bigger problem for me is that today's generation have no hope in figuring out how things like a smartphone work from first principles. At least when I was growing up in the 1970s, I had the fiction that I could understand how things work, and so I didn't give up trying.
I'm on the younger end of the HN spectrum, so I grew up playing Minecraft pretty regularly. I remember stumbling into low-level hardware design with a thing in the game called Redstone. You could combine it in numerous ways to make various Boolean logic gates. That progressed into making memory, ALU's, and the like in said game. Fast forward 8 years and I'm a hardware engineer IRL. Once you understand the basic 'building blocks' of how something works you'll develop an interest in the rest of the abstraction generally.
I suppose the best way to see it would be to think of it like a program. You can build a program from bunch of functions, not knowing how those individually "work", and have a finished product at the end. That's still an enjoyable process. You might enjoy it so much that you jump into the library and look at how the functions work. You might go further and look at how the code works at a lower-level language. Then down to machine code. Then at a part level (graphics card, processor, RAM etc). Then a component level. Then at an electro-dynamics level. You can keep going further and further into deeper levels of phsyics.
A kid is still going to have a grand old time plugging in all the parts of their computer and having it turn on, as much as they do building tree-houses and go-karts.
I think that's true for the current generation, so many adults I know don't appear to have any hobbies (creative or otherwise) whatsoever and spend every second of their free time consuming and not creating, not even consuming good content but crappy reality shows. I do more than most people I know (less than I'd like and mostly coding stuff) but I still come up way short of my perception of my fathers generation, of an evening I could generally find them hacking away at something out in the shed.
I got into all kinds of creative hobbies because everyone around me was so boring. We were always the exception. It's been true through human history. The weirdos who go out and build a plane or a car or start a movement were always mocked and pathologized before they were venerated.
Kids these days OTOH want to become YouTubers... and they actually CAN and DO with free video editing apps, 4K cameras built into their phones, etc. They're making memes (just look at all the creativity coming out of something as inane as TikTok), and just look at Minecraft.
All these platforms seem explicitly designed to exploit insecurities and encourage a mindless mob mentality. It's the antithesis of individualism and I cannot see how it could possibly improve one's life (at least, before you have the maturity to be comfortable in your own skin).
The more I read articles like this, the more I think the whole thing is pure toxicity.
I don't know how realistic or practical it's going to be to ban smartphones/social media, while still encouraging programming, internet research, experimentation and so on.
You will only be able to keep your kids off smart phones if you live in a community not using smart phones much for example the Amish. I think parents of the one percent could also create such a community for their children if they are diligent and choose the right private school.
My 6 year old son will go to a summer camp where smart phones are expressly forbidden. Not that I give him a smart phone but at least the older children won't have smart phones, too.
Camp is a good start. For what it's worth, one state in Australia just announced a ban on phones during school hours - couldn't agree more.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-25/victoria-to-ban-mobil...
I think we should think holistically, this means, don't only look at school but also at family, peer relations and society at large.
In other words I propose that we should completely forbid functional smart phones for children below 10 years then officially introduce smart phones in school as a part of the school's curriculum. The curriculum also limits usage and relaxes the rules when the children get older. Children also should have a say about rules.
Also needed are places where children and teenagers can meet and these places must be autonomously accessible (for example near the school but independent from school).
Such a community allows the children to learn about internet and social media in a safe and controlled manner. I think the children would prefer to play together instead of staying alone in bedrooms anyway.
You cut them off from people if they don't have a $1000 computer in their pocket?
Dumb phones are still a thing. They can call, text, and many have a camera that can send lower-res images. I think that's way more than enough to stay in touch. They don't need "Apps".
Oh really? Could you elaborate on that? I, as a high-tech professional in my early 30s, keep in touch with my pals in a group text. It's never failed.
EDIT: That said, you don’t need a $1000 iPhone. A $200 used smartphone (easily found for iPhone or Android) is good enough.
As much as I hate Facebook, Messenger is pretty damn solid.
I think it’s time that we evolve to a more compassionate world.
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What does the ‘More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible’ (Charles Eisenstein) look like to you?
Does having a closed source system for our communication, banking and governance tools help keep the ‘smartest’ people at the helm, or is this grandiosity and immature magician energy? Does it create an oppressor, victim and savior triangle?
Open/closed isn't even an issue compared to the limitations of the medium itself - because there is no such thing as a truly open digital system.
Only the smartest people can create industrial-scale digital systems by definition, so the idea that opening up the source code will somehow change this is very hard to take seriously.
So few social experiences happen through a non-cybernetic medium now. The average number of interactions a person has online now must be higher than those offline. Platforms like Facebook or Twitter don't connect us with more people, they detach us from more people and connect us to their platform.
Instagram, Twitter and all messengers are inherently mobile, not just in their design but at their core. Their pattern derive from mobile usage, as opposed to desktop patterns.
Twitter is clearly a byproduct of phones: same length as SMS, even worked through SMS at the start (when smartphones were mostly a cool concept or weird devices). There are tons of sources linking social media and smartphones, see for example https://marketingland.com/facebook-usage-accounts-1-5-minute...
Like, when I'm away "on my phone" I frequently actually talk to someone - there is human interaction in there.
In one case, you're directly interacting with someone. In another case, you're interacting with someone over the context of a Facebook post or a tweet or whatever. The former is an actual interaction (arguably, a simulation), the latter is quite literally a simulacrum of one (or many). Thus my point about this being a post-modern phenomena.
This phenomena was aptly described by The Invisible Committee's call to insurrection in one of their manifestos titled "Now"[0].
> The necessary condition for the reign of the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) is that beings, places, fragments of the world remain without any real contact. Where the GAFA claim to be “linking up the entire world,” what they’re actually doing is working toward the real isolation of everybody. By immobilizing bodies. By keeping everyone cloistered in their signifying bubble. The power play of cybernetic power is to give everyone the impression that they have access to the whole world when they are actually more and more separated, that they have more and more “friends” when they are more and more autistic. The serial crowd of public transportation was always a lonely crowd, but people didn’t transport their personal bubble along with them, as they have done since smartphones appeared. A bubble that immunizes against any contact, in addition to constituting a perfect snitch. This separation engineered by cybernetics pushes in a non-accidental way in the direction of making each fragment into a little paranoid entity, towards a drifting of the existential continents where the estrangement that already reigns between individuals in this “society” collectivizes ferociously into a thousand delirious little aggregates. In the face of all that, the thing to do, it would seem, is to leave home, take to the road, go meet up with others, work towards forming connections, whether conflictual, prudent, or joyful, between the different parts of the world. Organizing ourselves has never been anything else than loving each other.
0. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-invisible-commit...
My parents generation wondered if video games was destroying mine.
Now it's smartphones.
The good? The possibilities of smartphones are just awesome. It is amazing to be in touch with people all over the world. And all this huge knowledge .. avaiable in an blink. Who does even remember how it was to not be able to google just something you want to know? You needed to have books, or know expert people, or people to know which book to read. And now? Just go online and if you know how, you will find your information. Or get your amusement, your news, your need to be acnowledged.
But all of this is still brand new. So we still have to learn not to get lost in it. Be still aware that you have a physical body with needs and sensations. And people seem to forget, that doing sports or climbing a mountain is something very different, from watching a video about it. But television is even older and there it was only consumption. Now it is interaction - only, and that is sadly a bad part, mostly controlled by coorporations who wants to distract your attention as a buisness modell. Something there got really out of hand and with kids growing up with tailered ads accustomed to data from their whole online activity ever ... than this is where I see the real danger. But kids are allways much smarter than the older generation thinks they are, so I believe they will be doing fine.
Are people lonely because they're using their phones more, or do they use their phones more because they're lonely?
Also, the obligatory photo: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4....
How do I even find a common language with people whose main activities are poker, racing, and sports? These are all fine activities, but I always want to go off and do anything else when I try to socialize locally. We don't click.
It's not like I was more interested in them before I had an always-on internet connection. Social media and the internet in general gave me an outlet and community for the things I was drawn to before the internet entered the picture.
There aren't many people around here who would get this joke: https://snouts.online/@Kye/102329949919207919
People change, generations are different. That's the way the world works.
One thing is sure though after world war people changed and hopefully the self destruction mode of this generation might change themselves. Maybe for good or bad. Again we will have to wait.
It’s certainly believable that smart phones do affect sleep if nothing else and if so that could explain in part the increased incidences of mental health problems and other issues described in the article.
Everyone else on planet earth calls them Generation Z or Zoomers. Dammit this is that author who makes up her own words for things that already have well-established monikers isn't it. I knew she'd make it back on here at some point.
Nobody made eye contact, let alone talked, unless they were crazy, looking to make trouble, or both.
The alternative is, what? Striking up conversation with fellow passengers who definitely don't want to talk to me? Staring mindlessly out the window? Consuming useless content via newspaper instead?
I just don't understand this position.
Incomes https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2018/10/1...
Housing https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/24/home-prices-rising-faster-th...
College Tuition https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has...
Of course the economy for the millionaires and billionaires has been booming. A great time.
I opted out of driving in the late 90s because getting a shite car to go to a shite job to pay for the shite car looked like a terrible deal. The pay at the dairy queen hasn't gotten much better in the last twenty years, and it sounds like the kids aren't seeing the value in the car as much as my peers did.
Human interaction cannot be replaced by a screen and a keyboard.
No joke a child without a smartphone would seem weird to the rest of the group and risk alienation bases solely on the lack of that smartphone.
Social media is like booze - social lubricant when used responsibly, but can cause problems in those with addictive personalities. Teach your children to use it responsibly, instead of forcing them to be teetotalers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Has the internet destroyed a generation?
Have video games destroyed a generation?
Has TV destroyed a generation?
Has radio destroyed a generation?
Have novels destroyed a generation?
Each of these have been flogged ad-nauseum by the media in their time of peak popularity so that the older people can sit back with a smug quip "Kids these days..."
At least for that societal segment the prevalence of mental health is obvious, though I wonder if the rise is more that people are slowly becoming less keen to ostracise people with mental health issues and more keen to try and help them.
I sorely hope that my idle musing proves true. Because bottling it up forever didn't seem to help much.