7 ms·

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

128 points by eludwig 9y ago

rectang 9y ago
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.
- hakcermani 9y ago
  Or is it hell in a handset ?!
- fhood 9y ago
  Except whatever generation preceded the black plague. They were right.
  - richthegeek 9y ago
    The prediction they made wasn't "the next generation will be wiped out", it's always "the next generation is lazier, more narcissistic, less moral than us... and this will lead to them being 'worse' than us somehow". I don't think that regular sterilisation was a moral choice of the prior generation...
    - fhood 9y ago
      I didn't say they were right for the right reasons
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  Yes, people have a tendency to think like that, but this in itself provides no evidence about what'll actually happen with future generations. I am not arguing that I think there's a problem with this generation. Given my current state of knowledge in this topic, I'm agnostic about it.
- danisth 9y ago
  This article spends more time discussing observable differences with the next generation and less on deeming them doomed. The majority of articles out there fit your statement, but I think this one is worth the read.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  Yes, this idea is old enough that Socrates was known to complain about the next generation. However I find it far too dismissive to invoke this to downplay the damage that persistent internet use may be doing to youth. It is not about morals or character, it's about access to previously unprecedented levels of novel entertainment often being a surrogate for time spent on relationships.
- devinhelton 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    There are no outside tribes today. Unless somehow space aliens show up.
317070 9y ago
"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_suicide_prevention_2011.pdf https://www.escap.eu/bestanden/Research/alan_apter_on_youth_... )
- golergka 9y ago
  > correlation does not imply causation The articles adresses this issue and talks about research into correlation.
- rohansingh 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... > Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    Someone needs to come up with a law for internet laws that become overused to the point where they're more of an impediment to discussion than the thing they're about.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
      "If you're not paying then you are the product" being another prime example that seems to have been done to death here on HN.
    - maw 9y ago
      The only kind of person who would say that is a na—Sorry. Never mind.
- jensv 9y ago
  " One piece of data that indirectly but stunningly captures kids’ growing isolation, for good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate. Depression and suicide have many causes; too much technology is clearly not the only one. And the teen suicide rate was even higher in the 1990s, long before smartphones existed. Then again, about four times as many Americans now take antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe depression, the type most strongly linked to suicide."
almonj 9y ago
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.
DomreiRoam 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      > 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.
scrumper 9y ago
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.
- petra 9y ago
  Upvoted. Another relevant data point: Empathy dropped by 40% among college student between 2000-2010. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocker-empathy-dropped-40-in-college-students-2000 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocke...
  - sgift 9y ago
    That time range has many things inside it which could explain that drop, e.g. terror attacks, war on terror, banking crashing and seeing "too big to fail" applied to big banks, while people on the street were left to suffer. Before that the 90s with "you should only care for yourself, that way everyone is cared for" and so on.
- eludwig 9y ago
  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.
mcone 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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.
  - mcone 9y ago
    > This article exploits it, and commensurate skepticism is warranted. Sure, but empirical evidence tells me that my children are much happier after having played outside with their friends for an hour than they are after watching videos on YouTube. I can't just ignore that.
    - e40 9y ago
      And what about the multitudes of children that are not outside playing because of being online? In the community where I live, there are very few kids outside. All my son has ever wanted to do is play online, multiplayer games. The idea of roaming the streets on a bike and playing in a park... that is completely foreign to him.
      - rejschaap 9y ago
        They are missing out
baldfat 9y ago
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
zzalpha 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
  - orbitur 9y ago
    > WTF happened in the 90s Personal experience as a child of the 90s: for the middle class family, a TV began to occupy the bedrooms of teens. They were still too expensive in the 80s to justify, and cable wasn't nearly as pervasive in the 80s.
- frik 9y ago
  Exactly. It's social media that especially started with MySpace and later Facebook (FB/FBChat/Instagram/WhatsApp). that is causing the issues. Not smartphones, they are just devices.
zwieback 9y ago
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.
Markoff 9y ago
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 9y ago
  IM and text in general is terrible at conveying emotions. Part of the reason why platforms for sharing pictures went so popular lately.
Balgair 9y ago
“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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    > 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.
- omalleyt 9y ago
  There have been multiple civilization-wide collapses in those intervening 7,000 years, so he wasn't necessarily wrong for his time period And until it recently became taboo to do so, many giants of the enlightenment looked back and blamed many of those collapses on moral decay
eximius 9y ago
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.

128 points by eludwig 9y ago

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.

hakcermani 9y ago
Or is it hell in a handset ?!
fhood 9y ago
Except whatever generation preceded the black plague. They were right.
- richthegeek 9y ago
  The prediction they made wasn't "the next generation will be wiped out", it's always "the next generation is lazier, more narcissistic, less moral than us... and this will lead to them being 'worse' than us somehow". I don't think that regular sterilisation was a moral choice of the prior generation...
  - fhood 9y ago
    I didn't say they were right for the right reasons
jamesrcole 9y ago
Yes, people have a tendency to think like that, but this in itself provides no evidence about what'll actually happen with future generations. I am not arguing that I think there's a problem with this generation. Given my current state of knowledge in this topic, I'm agnostic about it.
danisth 9y ago
This article spends more time discussing observable differences with the next generation and less on deeming them doomed. The majority of articles out there fit your statement, but I think this one is worth the read.
graphitezepp 9y ago
Yes, this idea is old enough that Socrates was known to complain about the next generation. However I find it far too dismissive to invoke this to downplay the damage that persistent internet use may be doing to youth. It is not about morals or character, it's about access to previously unprecedented levels of novel entertainment often being a surrogate for time spent on relationships.
devinhelton 9y ago
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 9y ago
  There are no outside tribes today. Unless somehow space aliens show up.

317070 9y ago

"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_suicide_prevention_2011.pdf https://www.escap.eu/bestanden/Research/alan_apter_on_youth_... )

golergka 9y ago
> correlation does not imply causation The articles adresses this issue and talks about research into correlation.
rohansingh 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... > Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  Someone needs to come up with a law for internet laws that become overused to the point where they're more of an impediment to discussion than the thing they're about.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
    "If you're not paying then you are the product" being another prime example that seems to have been done to death here on HN.
  - maw 9y ago
    The only kind of person who would say that is a na—Sorry. Never mind.
jensv 9y ago
" One piece of data that indirectly but stunningly captures kids’ growing isolation, for good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate. Depression and suicide have many causes; too much technology is clearly not the only one. And the teen suicide rate was even higher in the 1990s, long before smartphones existed. Then again, about four times as many Americans now take antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe depression, the type most strongly linked to suicide."

almonj 9y ago

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.

DomreiRoam 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    > 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.

scrumper 9y ago

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.

petra 9y ago
Upvoted. Another relevant data point: Empathy dropped by 40% among college student between 2000-2010. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocker-empathy-dropped-40-in-college-students-2000 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocke...
- sgift 9y ago
  That time range has many things inside it which could explain that drop, e.g. terror attacks, war on terror, banking crashing and seeing "too big to fail" applied to big banks, while people on the street were left to suffer. Before that the 90s with "you should only care for yourself, that way everyone is cared for" and so on.
eludwig 9y ago
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.

mcone 9y ago

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 9y ago
> 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.
- mcone 9y ago
  > This article exploits it, and commensurate skepticism is warranted. Sure, but empirical evidence tells me that my children are much happier after having played outside with their friends for an hour than they are after watching videos on YouTube. I can't just ignore that.
  - e40 9y ago
    And what about the multitudes of children that are not outside playing because of being online? In the community where I live, there are very few kids outside. All my son has ever wanted to do is play online, multiplayer games. The idea of roaming the streets on a bike and playing in a park... that is completely foreign to him.
    - rejschaap 9y ago
      They are missing out

baldfat 9y ago

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

zzalpha 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
- orbitur 9y ago
  > WTF happened in the 90s Personal experience as a child of the 90s: for the middle class family, a TV began to occupy the bedrooms of teens. They were still too expensive in the 80s to justify, and cable wasn't nearly as pervasive in the 80s.
frik 9y ago
Exactly. It's social media that especially started with MySpace and later Facebook (FB/FBChat/Instagram/WhatsApp). that is causing the issues. Not smartphones, they are just devices.

zwieback 9y ago

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.

Markoff 9y ago

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 9y ago
IM and text in general is terrible at conveying emotions. Part of the reason why platforms for sharing pictures went so popular lately.

Balgair 9y ago

“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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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.
omalleyt 9y ago
There have been multiple civilization-wide collapses in those intervening 7,000 years, so he wasn't necessarily wrong for his time period And until it recently became taboo to do so, many giants of the enlightenment looked back and blamed many of those collapses on moral decay

eximius 9y ago

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.