
Smartphones Are Killing Americans, but Nobody’s Counting - tashapenguin
https://medium.com/bloomberg/smartphones-are-killing-americans-but-nobodys-counting-83becdc9aa3a
======
luxpir
Brits too - on a tangential point - Childline (a children's charity) reported
today a large increase in the numbers of suicidal children from the age of 10.

This is the age children start secondary school, so stress would of course
increase there, but it's also the age they start to use mobile phones.
Causation != correlation of course, but a pervasive form of bullying that
doesn't stop at the school gates, and that can be carried out pseudo-
nonymously, _might_ be a significant factor in the uptick seen. That, coupled
with constant streams of 'perfect' lives and no place to really discuss teen
issues when everything is recorded and potential blackmail material, can't be
helping the situation.

If Apple/Google really wanted to make a big difference to people's life
quality, they would take steps to mitigate this. They _do_ have a
responsibility to their clients, even if they are minors.

And, back on point, they could take a stab at working on stopping phone use if
the user is driving (and being able to differentiate between
passenger/driver). This, I hear, is also a large problem in NZ, for one, where
road fatalities are way higher than they should be.

~~~
zimpenfish
> they could take a stab at working on stopping phone use if the user is
> driving

Apple has implemented that in iOS 11.

> [children and phones]

And from something I posted elsewhere yesterday:

adults: record numbers of teens are depressed, we must find out why

teens: school is more stressful than ever, our parents screwed over the
economy, the earth is on a path to total environmental destruction, and now we
have to deal with actual fuckin' nazis

adults: it's the iphones isn't it

~~~
luxpir
Fair point on the 'blame phones'. But social media is powerful and might have
an amplifying effect on mental imbalances.

------
mikestew
“Story for Medium members only“. I’m normally the last one to complain about
paywalls and the like, but if there’s a workaround for this one, I can’t find
it.

Here’s the original Bloomberg link that works for me:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/smartphon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/smartphones-
are-killing-americans-but-nobody-s-counting)

~~~
pwinnski
Please, let's make this the official link for this post.

------
featherverse
tl;dr, headline is false. Smartphones aren't killing people. Stupid behavior
is killing people.

They know better, and they do it anyway.

Smartphones make it easy for everyone to record all of their phone calls,
protecting them from phone predators. They provide location capabilities which
make it easier for rescuers to find victims of accidents. So on and so forth.

Smartphones are great. Stupid people are going to find ways to kill themselves
no matter what tools you place in their hands. It's natural selection.

~~~
zimpenfish
> It's natural selection.

<pet peeve> No, it isn't. Not even slightly natural selection. </pet peeve>

~~~
uoaei
Depends where you draw your subjective threshold of "natural" ;)

I will say I believe it's a limited definition if you consider human-
constructed things as artificial but e.g. termite hills as natural.

------
SeanDav
Oh great, now Medium are hiding behind a forced login "paywall".

Up until now, Medium have been "encouraging" me to create an account and
login, now it is requiring it.

~~~
dawnerd
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/smartphon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/smartphones-
are-killing-americans-but-nobody-s-counting)

Weird that Bloomberg is in medium.

