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

How is not being able to interact with humans good?

 

They are interacting with humans. They're just doing it differently.

 

Should I be reading and commenting on this thread while driving on the interstate? Is that bad?

 

Just slightly.

 

I am fully convinced that parents who were born in the 1990s will think about giving a smartphone to teenagers in the same way that parents born in the late 1960s think about the idea of high schools having smoking areas. They'll wonder what in the hell the previous generation was thinking.

That said, I keep hearing about how society hates being "always on" -- yet nobody's turning off. Including me. I wonder what exactly I think I'd be missing.

 

Your comments are pithy, so you should be OK.

 

My two cents, with my two young adults (ages 21 and 22): There isn't a quantity I hear discussed more than Instagram likes. My daughter graduated from college last week. At the celebratory lunch, her, her friends, and my son discussed what he was going to write to her on instagram. It had to be just right.

Later on in the afternoon, her and her friends were discussing someone's post, and how it was posted at the wrong time, and won't get a lot of likes because it will be buried under other people's posts.

I don't consider my kids to be shallow or vapid, though they certainly sound like it in this post. But I do know that Instagram likes are a "thing".

 

I feel almost compelled to like every post on this thread.

 

Abbreviations are also a plus in this case.

 

I can't put any stock in the value of "likes," considering the three posters with the most "likes" at SJ are the three biggest dickheads here.

#jealousnotjealous

 

I don't thing anybody is going to argue that having all this information and convience is bad. The issue isn't that having and using a smartphone is bad, it's that like anything else young people aren't necessarily mentally and emotionally equipped to handle that much of anything.

I'm 35 and too often find myself fighting the urge to put off something important or not give it enough attention because I'm curious what people are saying on Twitter or don't want to fall two pages behind on a SJ.com conversation.

I can't imagine how strong that pull must be for a 13-year-old.

 

Maybe there needs to be a dickhead emoticon.