Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#161

Post by VvR-Ox » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 9:14 AM UTC

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…

Very interesting. When I was working with young people I noticed something completely different (in europe).

They tend to be better at communication with technologies but a lot worse in real face-to-face communication.

They stand some meters apart and rather text each other than standing up in front of a group of other people to just talk to the other person.

I also see greater economic insecurities but I don't understand how this is connected to less or later gains in self-sufficiency. Shouldn't it be reversed? In my time it was so important to get some extra bucks to spend on more/better clubs, booze and gas that we did nearly every shitty job to earn some.

What I think the article got right is the risks involved with this tendency towards less risk taking. Many activities we took part in our youth forced us to deal with unknown situations and people and we learned to cope with things. We spent hours at the riverside, in the forests etc. getting wasted, building stuff and doing nasty things that teenagers do - I think it was for the better of our development and a friend of mine who works with young people professionally supports this hypothesis.

When there are no insecurities and problems to tackle you don't learn to stand on your own feet. Learning to cope with stressful and strange situations and people at least helped me to find ways out of trouble instead of ending my life or get killed.

When we were bullied at school we met the bullies at the yard and beat the sh*t out of them instead of being overwhelmed by pseudo-anonymous groups of people on the net. I think that was easier as a mechanism of coping and at least you could do something about it.

I wouldn't underestimate the psychological stress they have to deal with nowadays and I think I also wouldn't want to switch positions.

I'm happy I grew up before this digital revolution just early enough to know the differences.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#162

Post by VvR-Ox » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

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…

This is a very important point indeed!

It's anxiety that drives national-socialists for example. Do we want them to rise again? I don't think so!

Also your example with the psychopath is a very good one. Success and money are not the most important things in the world even when instragram & co are bloated with pictures of "happy", rich, dumb people who have nothing but their looks.

If men wouldn't have taken risks probably they'd never have left Africa in the first place.

Re: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? (2017)

#163

Post by naasking » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

learnstats2 wrote: post #155

naasking wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You probably should be, because there are objective markers that don't depend on communication: https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016 > The article identifies that today…

Thanks for referencing Twitter, I hadn't thought to check that as a research source. The graph of suicide rates linked goes back to 1999. Suicide rate often tracks economic cycles - for example, the suicide rate was 50% higher in the 1920s than it is now.

> Suicide rate often tracks economic cycles - for example, the suicide rate was 50% higher in the 1920s than it is now.

Certainly among adults, but suicides among adolescents and teens tracking economic cycles? I'm skeptical.