OT: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

[Jud]

Profound.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

[Jud]

3 hours ago, wgscott said:

Less driving, and less (probably unprotected) sex.

 

The world, indeed, is coming to an end.

 

I hate cell phones, but I have trouble not seeing some of these as positives ...

 

I am reasonably sure the author does too, with his comments about how kids are safer *from external dangers* than ever.  He would, of course, like for us to have our cake and eat it too, so that diminution of external dangers wouldn't come with a side of suicide and kids who don't feel like getting jobs and leaving home.  (Though particularly the latter seems to me as if it might have to do with various economic factors.)

[Jud]

You can get to Facebook and Snapchat on the Web via desktop.  As "addictive"?

[Jud]

20 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

I will tactfully avoid the important, interesting,  powerful, tragic, but potentially contentious and passion-inducing issues mentioned above.

 

Here's an interesting recent book I've browsed: Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked  by Adam Alter:

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Addictive-Technology-Business-Keeping/dp/1594206643/

 

Blurb: "Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction—an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans."

 

 

 

Was he on Fresh Air?  If so, thanks for the link, was thinking of reading it (on my iPhone  ).

[Jud]

12 hours ago, cjf said:

I would say that its not just kids falling into the mobile phone trance but the adults just the same.

 

I routinely look around me when in various states of "wait" be it at the car dealer, the line at the food store or even at traffic lights and am fully baffled by what I see each time. I mean these zombies cant even sit quietly for a brief moment in unassisted thought without feeling the need to reach for their phone!

 

Are people really that bored with life that they cant pull themselves away from the screen for even 5mins to take in their surroundings and all the entertainment that the scenery has to offer?

 

Were all doomed!

 

 

 

To be fair, traffic and car dealerships may not be that educational.

[Jud]

For those worried about the current generation’s communication skills: In my work over the past couple of decades, I have read a fair number of written communications from the “greatest generation.”  To put it simply, we aren’t witnessing a deterioration today, just a continuation of the same old thing.

[Jud]

10 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. If what we are witnessing is "just" a continuation, IMO it is one with a rapidly accelerating rate of decline, i.e. by definition, a deterioration.

 

I don't think it is. 

 

We speak and write English very differently than we did in Chaucer's time, and why is that?  Due to some fiat or command?  No, it's due in great part to mistakes so widespread they were incorporated into the fabric of the language.  The spoken and written English of Shakespeare's time differed tremendously from Chaucer's, and ours again as much from Shakespeare's.  What this tells us is that people have *always* "misused" the received spoken and written language of their times.

[Jud]

42 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

I respectfully disagree. I do not believe that it is a valid to compare the changes in language over lengthy periods of time to the deterioration of language skills in young people due to the  introduction of technology over a very contracted period of time.

 

They probably tweeted the same about Gutenberg.

[Jud]

9 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Glib, but incorrect!

 

It's quite the contrary. Gutenberg's contribution made the written word available to the masses. The only thing that deteriorated as a result of his technology was ignorance.

 

Around the world, how many people now have phone service and access to the Internet who didn’t before?

 

That’s an aspect of cell phones (and solar power) in developing nations, as well as poorer and more rural areas in the developed world, that people may not consider: the need for much less infrastructure, and thus the democratization of knowledge and (electric and other) power.

 

There are also undoubtedly negative aspects, as the article linked in the OP helps to point out.