'Have smartphones destroyed a generation?'

Atlantic story from the new issue. Among the revelations: 12th graders in 2017 go out less without their parents than 8th graders did in 2009.

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

 

Yes.

 

I don't know about smartphones, but in re: the "destroyed a generation" matter The Atlantic's got some 'splainin' to do ...

 

That's because parents of current high schoolers are wildly cool in a way not previously seen in America.

 

Present company excluded, I'd wager.

 

In my day we didn't have any consarned fiddle diddle smart phones. In my day the phones weighed 25 pounds and only super cool teevee detectives like Joe Mannix had phones in their cars.

 

There are measurably negative effects. Sometimes things are just moral panics about young people. But sometimes, things are genuinely a cause for real concern.

 

Dems just lost more voters. /Alma

 

Would 12th-graders want to go out with their wildly cool parents anyway?

(Songbird photo at Ben's on 38th ca. 2010)

 

That's a 5+ minute video!!! What's in the rest of the video? Something besides that table of old guys must have caught your attention.

 

I think it's unfair to pick on the kids, honestly.

It's ruining people across many generations.

At least part of it is the burden of knowing all this shit that you'd rather not know, and conflating that knowledge to imagine things are worse than they actually, or, in the case of Facebook, people are living spectacular lives full of eating out and vacations until, all of the sudden, they're arguing on Facebook about some damn thing or another.

I had Facebook on the phone for awhile, maybe 6 months. Gone now. Haven't missed it.

 

Spent the day photographing people in NYC avoiding humanity by having their noses knee-deep in their phones.

We don't look at each other anymore.