
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - eludwig
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/?single_page=true
======
mcone
Most people in this thread seem to be downplaying the seriousness of these
problems, but as a parent I can tell you that the problems are very real. Paul
Graham wrote about them several years ago in his essay "The Acceleration of
Addictiveness" [0]:

"I've avoided most addictions, but the Internet got me because it became
addictive while I was using it. Most people I know have problems with Internet
addiction. We're all trying to figure out our own customs for getting free of
it. That's why I don't have an iPhone, for example; the last thing I want is
for the Internet to follow me out into the world."

[0]
[http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

~~~
rectang
> Most people in this thread seem to be downplaying the seriousness of these
> problems, but as a parent I can tell you that the problems are very real.

In my generation, parents said the same thing about TV.

The urge to believe in the moral decay of the young is extremely powerful.
This article exploits it, and commensurate skepticism is warranted.

~~~
Chaebixi
> In my generation, parents said the same thing about TV.

I lived through the transition, and the internet/smartphones are definitely
worse than TV.

TV gets boring (or there's nothing on), the one NES game you got for Christmas
last year gets boring, but there's always something new within easy reach on
the internet. It's much harder to get so bored you want to do something else.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _there 's always something new within easy reach on the internet. It's much
> harder to get so bored you want to do something else._

Very true, but have you ever found yourself bored enough to do something else,
yet _still_ continuing to check your favorite sites or looking for engagement
online and being disappointed? It's like looking for that dopamine hit and not
finding it. It kind of goes beyond boredom to a strange kind of empty feeling.

~~~
npsimons
> Very true, but have you ever found yourself bored enough to do something
> else, yet still continuing to check your favorite sites or looking for
> engagement online, and being disappointed? It's like looking for that
> dopamine hit and not finding it. It kind of goes beyond boredom to a strange
> kind of empty feeling.

This pretty much sums up a great majority of my online browsing experience in
the last few years.

------
Balgair
“We have fallen upon evil times, the world has waxed old and wicked. Politics
are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their elders. Each man
wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book."\- Naram Sin, c. 5000 B.C.
(Cuneiform tablet)

Every time I hear 'olds' talk about how the 'youngs' are lesser or missing
something, I am reminded of this quote pulled out of the dust from 7,000 years
ago. That said, yes, things are changing. Just like the Naram Sin's society
underwent a transformation from hunting and gathering to agriculture, we are
undergoing a similarly sized shift in human life from industrial to climo-
genetic-digital. Yes, things are changing, probably not for the better in the
short term, but that changing is not going to stop.

So, I don't know, maybe instead of trying to make things like the old times,
jump in with the 'youngs' and help fend off the sharks alongside them. Maybe
it'll help those diseases the 'olds' always seem to catch: nostalgia and
regret.

Also, yeah, those graphs are a train-wreck.

~~~
jashkenas
A lovely quote. But sadly, apocryphal:

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-
end/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/)

> "In conclusion, QI believes there is currently no compelling evidence that
> any one of the multiplicity of quotations listed above was really inscribed
> on a tablet during ancient days in Assyria."

~~~
abiox
> A lovely quote. But sadly, apocryphal

it did seem odd to me to suggest anyone in 5000 BC would be wanting to "write
books" as a means of gaining notoriety. seems a bit anachronistic, but perhaps
i underestimate our ancient friends.

------
317070
"No"

The answer to the question in the title.

The generation is different, and a correlation does not imply causation. I
personally find the connection pretty far fetched. After all, while the
smartphone is also common in the EU, the teen suicide rates did not change
that much. (slide 9:
[https://www.escap.eu/bestanden/Research/alan_apter_on_youth_...](https://www.escap.eu/bestanden/Research/alan_apter_on_youth_suicide_prevention_2011.pdf)
)

~~~
scrumper
> After all, while the smartphone is also common in the EU, the teen suicide
> rates did not change that much

Bad argument. Gun ownership in Canada is higher than the USA's, yet their
firearms murder rate is massively lower. That doesn't mean that gun ownership
in the USA isn't a problem worth addressing.

There is something in the intersection of smartphones and teens and the USA
which is causing a measurable deleterious effect on the '07-'12 generation.
The thing that's changed is smartphone ownership (and the services they can
access). So clearly it is worth investigating.

~~~
wongarsu
It's important to differentiate between "smartphones are universally bad for
teens", "smartphones are bad for teens in our circumstances" and "smartphones
are usually bad for teens, but under some circumstances they work our fine".
That's not just an academic difference: it may be easier to change to
circumstances surrounding smartphones than the presence of smartphones. But
that requires understanding what the factors are. Wrongfully declaring
smartphones as universally bad is unlikely to be helpful.

------
DomreiRoam
For the graph part, I find weird that we believe that iPhone introduction is
stronger than the 2008 financial crisis on teen anxiety issue.

~~~
scrumper
Well here's a suggestion: A recession manifests to a kid as a traumatic event
- mom and lose their jobs, the family has to downsize, you get pulled out of
private school. Big, bad things. But after that, it's done; kids are
adaptable, they get on with the day-to-day. You're not wallowing in
existential dread at 14 in any real way about your own future; maybe it's
college or the military or an apprenticeship or whatever, but it's The Future.
It'll be fine. Adolescents are horrible at consequence extrapolation: it's why
they're famously risk hungry and blasé about doing stuff grownups would be
terrified of. Why they never think they'll be the ones who die or get pregnant
or fail.

Smartphones though... If you buy the thesis of this article, they're a
continuing source of shifting stressors: social media addiction, constant
engagement, physical isolation, cyberbullying and exclusion. Those pervasive,
chronic pressures would get to you after a while.

~~~
DomreiRoam
I think we can't see the 2008 the 2008 as only a one time event because the
2008 crisis caused a period of stress for a while for a lot of families.

I agree that the smartphone has a strong addictive power but so does the
internet, alcohol, various drugs ... It wasn't alone in a "source of shifting
stressors".

So I think it s difficult for me to be completely convinced on this thesis
because they didn't speak about the nearly concomitant 2008 event that in my
mind could explain why teenager would fall to addiction. The fact that the
smartphone was the new addiction is not irrelevant but it isn't the full
explanation.

~~~
zimpenfish
> the 2008 crisis caused a period of stress for a while for a lot of families.

And likely still is due to the long term ramifications.

------
zwieback
It is a real problem, as any parent of teenagers can attest. What I find
interesting, though, is that a lot of the data on happiness is collected via
Smartphone, the very technology under scrutiny. Maybe we didn't know as much
about teen depression because we didn't have the technology to collect the
data while our kids were drinking at the roller rink.

At any rate, it's up to the parents. I'm not afraid to take the phone away but
I also put my own phone down at the same time.

------
zzalpha
You know, those graphs are really not that compelling. If you look closely,
the overall trends started either before, or after, 2007. None of them appears
to demonstrate a strong correlation with the launch of the iPhone itself.

That's not to say the article, itself, doesn't have merit, but man, if you're
gonna try and put together impactful visuals, that's not the way to go about
it.

~~~
ashark
Most of them lag the release by a similar amount, which you'd expect since the
trend of giving kids smart phones didn't start the moment the iPhone came out
(would have seemed insane at the time, in fact).

[EDIT] thought the sleep one especially is weird. WTF happened in the 90s to
make sleep get so much worse?!

~~~
zzalpha
_Most of them lag the release by a similar amount_

I interpret them slightly differently. IMO, most seem to show a preceding
trend followed by trailing acceleration. One (I believe it was the Teen Sex
graph) shows a steady trendline with no point-in-time correlation whatsoever.

You could put a line almost anywhere on those graphs labelled "iPhone" and
it'd be about as compelling.

Take the line out and I absolutely agree that something that was going on for
at least a decade prior to about 2010 seems to have sped up. But the iPhone
line feels entirely artificial and, IMO, undermines the impact of those
visuals.

------
scrumper
This is thoughtful and well researched. It is really worth reading properly;
it deserves more than a tiresome, reflexive quotation of Betteridge's law and
the assumption that smartphones are a universal good.

There's actual data: increase in reported feelings of loneliness; increase in
suicide rate; decrease in time spent socializing; increase in symptoms of
depression; decrease in sleep and sleep quality. There's a significant
inflection point around 2007. It is a compelling presentation which demands an
attempt at an alternative explanation, yet I haven't seen one here.

~~~
eludwig
I totally agree with you. My kids are in their 30s so I avoided this whole
question through timing. I am fascinated to see what the others here think,
especially those with kids that are in the affected cohort.

There was a very tragic event in our area (Norther NJ) just recently. A 12
year old girl committed suicide due to bullying, some of which was described
as "cyberbullying." There are not a lot of details available yet, so it's hard
to say if there was a smartphone involved or not. Can you imagine that not
only are you getting bullied on school grounds, but now it also follows you
home in your pocket? Egad. No escape. All by yourself. Horrible.

I guess in the end it really is up to the parents to do what they can.

~~~
scrumper
That's a very sad story. You are right, the inescapability is very hard to
imagine.

My own kids are 5 and 3. I am acutely aware that this problem is looming for
us. So far, my kids almost never play with our iPhones beyond FaceTiming
grandparents; they get access to an iPad on the one international flight we do
a year; and TV is a rare, weekly treat. Both of us work so this is tough to
enforce, but I've already fired one nanny in part over it. I am hoping that
their own imaginations will become more appealing places to play than some
screen, but I recognize the forces I'm fighting against.

We're not luddites at all; they understand that music and fun things come from
the internet, they get that there are fun apps on the phone they can
occasionally play, we don't make any secret of our own use of technology, but
we position it as a grown-up thing, like beer or going to bed after dark in
the summer.

I don't really see how our approach can survive first contact with grade
school.

~~~
eludwig
>>I don't really see how our approach can survive first contact with grade
school.

I hear you. Best of luck. This whole subject is hard to find "reasonable
parental balance" around. I'm really not sure what we would have done.

~~~
scrumper
Thanks. Yep, nobody knows. Maybe we'll (claim to) figure it out and get a book
deal out of it.

------
eximius
I wonder how strong this effect would be without the increase in
overprotectivity and decrease in labor values. That is, I _wasn 't allowed_ to
leave home with friends my parents didn't know or if I didn't know when I'd be
home. I usually didn't know what time I could I guarantee I'd be home or where
we'd go, or I didn't want to be a burden by restricting where my friends could
go to where I could go. Similarly, working felt like a waste of time because
high school students can basically only get minimum wage jobs and we already
spent 40+ hrs a week at school or on homework. Even part time at 10 hours/week
just felt like chump change.

------
baldfat
The real lost generation are the toddlers and preschoolers of today. The
majority of parents have just disconnected. I work with about 300 3-5 year
olds. They can't even notice that their tablet or phone is even talking to
them. Communication from an adult is background noise.

I think there isn't a truer SciFi short story out there then Ray Bradbury's
"The Veldt."

Leonard Nimoy's reading:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPTGS5DqtR4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPTGS5DqtR4)

Deadmau5 song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtNS6hbVy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtNS6hbVy4)

------
rectang
There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the next generation is
going to hell in a handbasket.

Every generation believes that the next generation is doomed. Every generation
is wrong.

~~~
devinhelton
_Every generation is wrong._

Except the elders in the late Roman empire who complained about how citizens
would rather cut off their thumbs than fight in the Roman army. Their
decadence did actually doom them.

In general in history, decline and an increase in decadence is the norm,
reductions in decadence are the exception. So many elders are in fact correct
when they complain about the next generation. But the decline can often
continue slowly for many generations before an outside tribe is strong enough
to come in and conquer the decadent people.

~~~
AstralStorm
There are no outside tribes today. Unless somehow space aliens show up.

------
Markoff
No, they didn't.

This article could be written about children in 90s hanging in malls staring
at TV and computers, they would talk to each other on the phone or in person.

So what's different? TVs and computers were replaced by smartphones, voice
calls and talking in person was replaced mostly by always accessible instant
messaging. Is it really worse to be able to chat with your friend anytime and
not just when you see each other in person or when your parents allow you to
block phone line?

~~~
AstralStorm
IM and text in general is terrible at conveying emotions. Part of the reason
why platforms for sharing pictures went so popular lately.

------
almonj
Many of the problems the author speaks of are likely caused by things other
than smart phones. Young people are facing an increasingly dim future, the
prospects of being able to find a good job or own a home keep getting worse.
All that stuff filters through family relations, friends.. etc. and its not
like social pressures to be accepted did not exist in the past. It is easier
to find friends and fit in today using social media. Isolated people can more
easily find groups they identify with if they have more uncommon personalities
than in the past. It does not matter if young people get less screen time,
they are still going to be thrown into and economic and cultural disaster
society. Big government destroyed a generation, not smart phones.

