'This is what it's like to grow up in the age of likes, lols and longing'

Right.

Not to go all Rick Stain on you, but in the grand scheme of things, every human generation fucks things up at about the same rate as every other human generation does.

This is all the same old, "Back in my day..." shtick it's always been. Nothing more than intergenerational, meaningless harrumphing about anything different.

 

There's a pretty good body of research about what that much screen time does to the brain, though. That's a big difference.

 

Screen time brains < CTE brains?

 

Only in 21st century America could having a bottomless pool of information at your fingertips 24/7 be considered a bad ting.

 

Screen time used to be TV time. Same difference. Doing one passive thing all day isn't healthy, although for most adults that's the world of work right there.

 

Yeah. How many "likes" you've gotten is definitely the kind of information that furthers the cause of humanity.

 

It is excellent.

There are so many more things going on that aren't written about extensively. The story maintains its focus and tells a compelling story about it. I was wondering why this girl has an au pair and started thinking, here we go, a tech story about a well-off family that will have no reach beyond their little world. Then the reveal about the mother dying. And the girl never talks about it. Then we move on to different vignettes of the girl, such as reaching for the phone she forgot in her dad's car. Touches on how the father is trying to figure out being a single parent but doesn't get into it too much.

I wonder what the story would be like focusing on a minority family or a less well-off family or even a family where both parents are alive and just working unremarkable, regular jobs. But it doesn't matter because the article isn't really about how kids use their phones or computers. It just uses that to tell a story you don't realize you're being told.

 

It's largely how the next generation will relate to one another.

Is it really any different than us seeing how many baseball cards we could compile as kids? Or any of the other stupid shit we collected?

 

Hell yes it's different.

Human interaction is changing before our eyes.

 

Exactly. I think one of the weakest decisions bad editors make is to try and broaden every story, even though it's done with good intentions. THIS kid is the window into this issue, but it's also just a story about THIS family. If a poorer kid were the window into this issue, sure the story might be different. But that's not THIS story. I'm so glad the Post doesn't do what so many places do, try to wedge four stories into one, ruining the emotional beats of the most powerful stuff.

 

Before you know it, they will have message boards for people with common backgrounds to talk about issues and even once in awhile meet each other. They'll probably be in different cities which participants will happily drive hours to get to. This is coming, as sure as winter to Winterfell.

 

OK. It's different.

But why do so many people think it's bad?