The answer is “yes”. Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation.
Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data–some reaching back to the 1930s–I had never seen anything like it.
Grab a coffee.
About 10 years ago while waiting in a dentist’s office I saw the strangest thing. All the time I was there a twentyish girl was typing on her phone and giggling. I had to tell my wife the strange phenomenon I saw, adding that that was only half of it. Someone on the other end of the conversation was wasting their life too. Little did I know what was coming. Grown people spending every waking minute texting. I have never sent a text in my life. Mind you, my phone calls probably average 30 seconds. Not into BS.
think this is bad? I read a book on the plane coming back from B.C. from my neice who spent time teaching in Japan. a whole generation of wusses, confined to their room, living at home with their exasperated doting parents. there’s a word for it, average age 31:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
I am the proud possessor of an LG flip phone which is so obsolete I just found out there was never a driver to move the pics off the unit via the USB cable. sheesh.
OTOH, my flat rate fee is about 28 bucks including the govt’s take. you know, da gubbamint, always there like a mob enforcer seeking ‘protection’ money. ya, that one.
I *still* have never done a tweet and only this year bothered to master, (drum roll . . . . .) text messaging !!! wheee !!!!
Im retired and am more active then when I was salaried OR wage earning.
I also hit a new record low weight of 181 pounds from my record high of 206 back when this eGen was first showing up.
migod, visions of life in the middle of the 3rd millennium, humahns reduced to a skin-and-bone pale sickly species, all sorts of electronic accessories glommed onto their frail frame. sign of the times.
Was watching an NHL game and during a stoppage the camera panned the crowd at ice level,everyone was looking down,guess what they were doing.
People who use smartphones have this head down, eyes down position, just like slaves do.
I suspect this is why Jesus said, “When these things start to happen, stand up and hold your heads high; because you are about to be liberated!”
When the young people look on their phones for news, they see the headline, read a few lines and swipe to the next item. They do NOT read the entire article, they only notice the headlines. If you can write an effective headline you are gold, and your message, whether false or true, good or bad, gets through. The demise of newspapers is so sad.
The Darwin Award candidates are the ones that drive me nuts. They leave a mall exit , for example, look neither left nor right, straight out in front of cars whose drivers now have the responsibility for the existence of an undeserving human thrust on them.
Also , hopefully, there will come a time when karmic street justice will descend in full fury on those who sit at stop lights with their twittery things all aquiver, missing the green for a time.
Those who cause traffic accidents because of the damned little machines should never be allowed to drive again. Never means exactly that.
Cause death or serious injury because of the finger thing and I’d advocate an immediate life sentence behind bars with no parole..this goes for any driver of any age.
Clearly a few changes might be needed to fine tune our legal system, I volunteer to write them as soon as the Supreme Court is turfed.
Steve Jobs wouldn’t let his kids become iOS addicts
Jobs set out to purposely limit the amount of time his kids spent using their iPhones and other gadgets — even going so far as to stop them using Apple’s latest must have-devices altogether.
Bilton recalls being “[chewed] out” by Steve Jobs after writing about one of the iPad’s perceived shortcomings in 2010. After Jobs had cooled down, Bilton asked Jobs what his children thought of the then-newly released iPad, to which Jobs informed the stunned journalist that they hadn’t tried it yet because, “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
The subsequent story describes how this actually isn’t all that uncommon a practice for the kids of technology CEOs and the like — many of whom spend less time with the latest tech product than your average person. Bilton backed his conversation with Jobs up by contacting biographer Walter Isaacson to check Jobs was telling him the truth.
“Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things,” Isaacson says, his knowledge coming from having spent plenty of time in the Jobs household. “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices.”
https://www.cultofmac.com/295530/steve-jobs-wouldnt-allow-kids-become-addicted-ios-devices/
Yawn. With video games having failed to ruin society like they were supposed to, I guess we need a new techno-villain.
Then there is Trump with his 144 character tweets. That’s the limit of his intelligence.
When I was a schoolboy, I thought amateur radio was the neatest thing this side of the space program. For a long time, I wanted to become a ham and, eventually, I got my own callsign.
Several years ago, I attended an IEEE social function and I sat at a table with a number of electrical engineering students. One of them saw the hand-held transceiver I had clipped to my belt and he wondered what it was.
When I explained to him that it was an FM radio which worked on the 6 m, 2 m, and 70 cm amateur bands, he gave me the strangest look. He’d never heard of amateur radio until that evening.
I’ll bet, though, that the kid knew all about his smartphone and how to upload video files to Youtube. But I doubt he’ll ever be able to use it to speak directly to someone on the other side of the continent either by bouncing signals off the ionosphere or over a satellite.
it’s them danged teachers
“With video games having failed to ruin society like they were supposed to….”
Odd that you should say that because I was going to add that this ‘isolationist’ tech trend really began as far back as 1985 with the rise of video gaming. (trigger alert) Video gaming was and still is pretty much of a male thing and while harmful to social development of males is/was not as destructive to society as the iphone simply because females were not interested.
Prior to 1985 it was the pin ball machine. Before that it was the pool table. Before that …
What gets me is young couples in expensive restaurants both looking at their phones all the time.
There’s no evidence vidya did any damage at all.
When I was about 10 years old, my Dad bought me a crystal radio kit. I copied the design (about 3 or four parts plus connectors) and began building them for my friends.
Have built many more electronic projects over the years including two personal computers.
I thought you played those games.
“Have Smartphones destroyed a generation?”
Anybody remember the early 1950s when horror comics were destroying the nation’s youth?
The early 1960’s when rock and roll and transistor radios were destroying the nation’s youth?
The 1970’s when violent television and movies were destroying the nation’s youth?
The 1980’s when Ronald Regan and the Me Generation were destroying the nation’s youth?
The 1990’s when it was violent video games that were destroying the nation’s youth?
I can’t even remember what it was in the 2000’s that was destroying the nation’s youth. The internet, probably.
So now, smartphones are destroying the nation’s youth?
Sure they are.
Now get off my lawn.
Thank’s Steve, I forgot pool parlors and pinball machines. Also destroying the nation’s youth.
Even though the smartphones are controlled by two opposable thumbs … I suspect the evolutionary pattern is … backward … toward the apes who would easily clutch an iPhone in a grasping motion … but could never hold a pencil with fine motor dexterity. I suspect Gen. iX cannot write the cursive alphabet to save their lives but easily clutch their phones with “busy” thumbs.
So many basic human skills have been made obsolete by the smartphone; reading a calendar, telling analogue time, basic addition and multiplication, map reading (my wife blindly follows the lady’s voice … yes, with some unfortunate results). Congrats to our technology and the advanced skills of our phones … however I’m gonna have to give (most) humans a FAILing grade. Soon … it will be considered “racist” to require basic addition and subtraction as a college prerequisite … following the exclusion of algebra at the college level.
Wrist watches are rare with the younger generation. waaaahhh! What will become of us?
University students are completely brainwashed as far as technology is concerned.
At a university alumni function, I happened to chat with someone who, at that time, had recently graduated in engineering. We got to talking about amateur radio and she couldn’t comprehend what it was.
Her response was, “You mean it’s like a social network?”
(Yeah, kid, I guess those ham nets that assist emergency services during disasters or severe weather events are like Farcebook, aren’t they? All those new signal modes and all that tinkering with hardware are like uploading stuff to Youtube, right?)
I bit my tongue otherwise I would have told her to give her degree back as she, obviously, had learned nothing of value during her studies.
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
Well, something has caused a large percentage of the current generation and probably a good part of the previous one, especially thirty something males, to still be living in mama’s basement and the country has to import breeders.
TheTooner, bingo.
Text and emojis on a “smart”phone.
You have in your hand a device with which you can actually talk or even have a video conference with anyone on the planet with a similar device, yet you choose to send a telegraph with hieroglyphics.
Yeah, that is fargin’ brilliant.
We left the pool cues and were captured by rock and rock via the short haired beetles. Go Mick go.
“Prior to 1985 it was the pin ball machine. Before that it was the pool table. Before that …”
And before that it was horse shoes and lawn darts and croquet.
What are you trying to say? Are you telling me there is some equivalence between modern electronic devices and playing pool? If you’re a drive-by shooter, twitter is a more appropriate location for you.
to those critical of this article, did you even read it? A major point of the article is the isolating social effects of the technology. Kinda different than pool, pinball, rock and roll, video games, etc. Besides, the scale of adoption of this technology is far and beyond the previously mentioned ‘evils’.
H
It’s rewiring their brains in real time. That’s the difference between smartphones and pinball.
“cannot write the cursive alphabet”
I can attest that our 12yr old grandson cannot decipher cursive writing. My wife and I laugh that we now have a secret code.
Yes, the twin evils of gin and jazz are surely corrupting our youth.
“Rewiring their brains in real time”? What does that even mean?
I’d be a lot more concerned about the epidemic of divorce and out-of-wedlock births leading to children being shuttled back and forth between two households, raised by single mothers or barely there day care workers.
Excessive social media and smartphone use is a symptom, not a cause. Kids are desperate for some kind of connection, some kind of permanent family that they’re being denied at home, and they’re trying to create it out of their friends list.
The answer is “yes”.
Nope. The answer is “Uhhhhhh, like, uhhhhh maybe?”
According to Mark Levi, a Sydney-based sleep doctor, the scientific reason why mobile phones can have such a negative influence on sleeping patterns is due to the unnatural light they produce.
“Blue light in your bedroom retards your sleeping, it affects your hormones, it affects your melatonin secretions, your insulin secretions, it affects a lot of balance in the body,” Levi told Xinhua.
“When a phone is beeping all night or they are watching a screen all night, it’s affecting their sleep a lot and we’re seeing child with sleep patterns that are disturbed and it’s going to affect their attitude, their cognitive skills, concentration skills, their moodiness during the day.”
An app like Snapchat where a user has to take a photo and add a comment daily or they lose their snap-streak and have to re-establish a special friendship status. Since the photos disappear in a certain length of time the other user gets an alert and reaches for the smartphone.
When this becomes a daily then hourly routine I would call that rewiring or programming.
I would also call it programming when the user WASTES 30 minutes Snap-streaking all their friends so they don’t offend them.
Users on Facebook are so willing to give up their privacy to friends, friends of friends and the world.
At what point did society become so shallow and cavalier about their privacy.
Wouldn’t you call that programming????
Dumb analogy. Heaven forbid you read the article.
One of the BIG differences between your list of “Ends of Civilization” and the smart phone is: to get to,and to do all of these things, kids actually had to get outside,mingle and interact directly with other people,including their friends. Going TO the arcade was an actual social outing,scrounging quarters off the Ol’ Man was usually a good experience in face to face negotiations. So in all, you actually had to experience social interaction on a face to face basis and develop actual social skills( or a good fake up of them) to get to and then actually use these items.
bull’s eye Kate, *centre* of the bull’s eye. critics of the article need to do some research on that formative period of a young person’s experiences and training where the ‘firmware’ portion of their brain is being programmed.
there is scant similarity of the present iGen, and my crowd who actually had to *go somewhere* and *interact* for all those previous recreational uses of their time.