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Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

theatlantic.com

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Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#141

Post by bvhg3 »

tictoc wrote: post #115

It's cyclical. None of this matters, because we adapt. It was rock n roll, television, video games, now smart phones. It will be something else. Perhaps we are all mentally screwy, or perhaps it's another exaggeration. Either way, it's too big. It's like the ice age. It just crushes any and all things. It's not inherently evil. It's just new technology. We will get use to it. People are addicted, but there will be a…

Not necessarily, since we now live in a world where your every movement, action, relationship, and communication is intercepted and analyzed. Your thoughts are next. We don't need microchips because our phones are our microchips, but we may get them anyway, for "security" (that's security of government against its people of course). Things change when we have autonomous drone swarms flitting across our cityscapes and nanobots picking away at our insides. Do you believe it is possible to control a person's will? These are different times, and the life that "keeps ticking along" is not necessarily for any of "us".

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#142

Post by antisthenes »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #23
looeee wrote: post #14

Betteridge's law: for any headline ending in a question, the answer is 'no'. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...

It's surprising how actually effective it is when trying to determine if an article is going to be worth your time.

Combine it with Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) and you're left with a very small subset of decent journalism.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#143

Post by bvhg3 »

asdff wrote: post #135
jperry wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an "old man yells at cloud" attitude. The alternative is, what? Striking up conversation with fellow passengers who definitely don't want to talk to me? Staring mindlessly out the window? Consuming useless content via newspaper instead? I just don't understand this position.

The alternative is staring into space, being aware of your surroundings, focusing your thoughts on the things going around in your immediate life, rather than using every available 20 second period of time to stare at a screen. Sure, people read crap on print while on the train before, but people weren't whipping out the paper for those 30 seconds in the elevator or while walking across the street.

I think that's the biggest issue: these devices intend to remove every moment of contemplation and critical thought we might otherwise employ to pull ourselves out of the desperately worsening situation we face. At least the television stayed in your living room and you were compelled to leave that room and interact with people in order to remain a living person. Now we just carry the TV around with us and it's more addictive than ever.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#145

Post by watwut »

naasking wrote: post #119
watwut wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> less car accidents, have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy, ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent These are positive changes. All of them. These were literally something bad about older generation . All these things have negative consequences on not just risk accepting person, but also to other people around. If you are more anxious but less violent, then it is a good trade o…

Merely repeating something does not make it fact. It's shortsighted to evaluate good and bad purely by outcome. Plenty of psychological and physiological pathologies drive reduced violence, less risk taking, etc. For instance, are you going to suggest people should become more psychopathic because it's correlated with success? Are you going to suggest all men take testosterone suppressants because that would reduce v…

I would strongly prefer anxious person in the same room over violent one. It is that simple.

If what you need is testosterone suppressant to not hit me, yes I strongly prefer you taking it over me being beaten or me doing things I did not wanted to for fear of your aggression. It is better for you too, assuming cops and courts will do the thing they are supposed to - putting you in prison.

Fortunately, men generally don't need testosterone suppressant to not be violent. Adult men violence is choice and occasionally mental problem.

Teen pregnancy rates are again result largely of sexual education, girls better able to resist pressure to have unprotected sex and boys better knowing it causes problems to them too. There is literally nothing to gain by not using a condom in that situation.

All of these are kids making better choices. That absolutely should count for something.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#146

Post by watwut »

zeropnc wrote: post #104
learnstats2 wrote: post #48

This article/researcher makes claims that: a) there is a mental health crisis among teenagers which is not parallel to other comparable generations, and b) that crisis is linked to mobile phones. I'm not convinced by either claim. In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If…

> Teenagers face far greater economic insecurity than before, and are more acutely aware of it. What will the workforce look like when they graduate highschool? Jobs that teenagers would have been invited to do are being replaced with automated checkouts and computer vision algorithms. Teenagers are required to go into more debt than ever, to escape this lack of opportunities via education. Sometimes it blows my mind…

People in area where their friends die of diarrhea are depressive too. They get sad, they suicide, they have traumas and mental problems. They self medicate with alcohol, drugs, excessive risk and what not to make pain go away.

That does not make it impossible for rich countries people to be depressed due to economy going down relatively.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#147

Post by naasking »

watwut wrote: post #145
naasking wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merely repeating something does not make it fact. It's shortsighted to evaluate good and bad purely by outcome. Plenty of psychological and physiological pathologies drive reduced violence, less risk taking, etc. For instance, are you going to suggest people should become more psychopathic because it's correlated with success? Are you going to suggest all men take testosterone suppressants because that would reduce v…

I would strongly prefer anxious person in the same room over violent one. It is that simple. If what you need is testosterone suppressant to not hit me, yes I strongly prefer you taking it over me being beaten or me doing things I did not wanted to for fear of your aggression. It is better for you too, assuming cops and courts will do the thing they are supposed to - putting you in prison. Fortunately, men generally…

> I would strongly prefer anxious person in the same room over violent one. It is that simple.

False equivalency. "More violent" does not mean "violent". Kids rough housing are technically being violent. Are you really worried about that?

> All of these are kids making better choices.

Or it's kids not having natural impulses that are inherent to all human beings. And that would be a serious problem.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#148

Post by leonroy »

The article describes declines in amount of sleep. Having just finished Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep I was surprised to discover that measurable cognitive effects and mental health problems like depression and anxiety occur when sleep drops by as little as one hour (7 instead of 8).

It’s certainly believable that smart phones do affect sleep if nothing else and if so that could explain in part the increased incidences of mental health problems and other issues described in the article.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#149

Post by Invictus0 »

philpem wrote: post #120
Invictus0 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually read the article? Because all of the author's claims have data to match, it's not just the perennial kids these days rant. As a member of the so called iGen, I can attest anecdotally that the prevalence of anxiety and mental health issues is very real.

I help run meetups for, well, furries. Helped out with conventions too. At least for that societal segment the prevalence of mental health is obvious, though I wonder if the rise is more that people are slowly becoming less keen to ostracise people with mental health issues and more keen to try and help them. I sorely hope that my idle musing proves true. Because bottling it up forever didn't seem to help much.

It's hard to believe that one could hide a mental health disorder for long. I have had relationships with two girls with anxiety and its effects are easy to see. One had a nervous breakdown driving on the highway, eventually beginning SSRIs after the relationship ended, and the other needed to take medication daily to function normally. The second had started taking meds only briefly before we began dating and so it was a constant battle(? not really the right word) for her to discover that she could do things while on the medication that she was previously too afraid to do before, such as socializing in large groups and other things like that.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#150

Post by apatters »

learnstats2 wrote: post #48

This article/researcher makes claims that: a) there is a mental health crisis among teenagers which is not parallel to other comparable generations, and b) that crisis is linked to mobile phones. I'm not convinced by either claim. In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If…

> get in less car accidents

They're driving less in the first place: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/05/teen-car-...

> have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy

They (along with 20-somethings) also have less sex period: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...

> ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent

Drug use and getting into fights typically happen in social settings. Teens are socializing in person less often: https://qz.com/1320344/americans-are-socializing-less-and-pl...

It makes you wonder, what the heck _are_ they doing with their time?

Well, playing video games, using their phones, and feeling lonely: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/01/loneliness-felt-...

As well as reporting more depression and anxiety, and committing suicide in record numbers: http://theconversation.com/the-mental-health-crisis-among-am...

Is it as simple as "phone bad, sunshine good?" No probably not, but there are studies out there linking social media to depression, and many studies linking loneliness to poor mental health.

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