Quote:One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people...




https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

(08-03-2017, 03:58 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-03-2017, 02:26 PM)gabrielle Wrote: Interesting article, I almost posted it myself this morning.  To clarify, the "generation" she's talking about here refers to those born from 1995 to 2015, whom she calls "iGen" (probably as apt a name as any for the Millennial/artist cuspers).

Let's see. 13.

2017 - 13 = 2004. Millie.

Quote:The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen.  Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet. The Millennials grew up with the web as well, but it wasn’t ever-present in their lives, at hand at all times, day and night. iGen’s oldest members were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced, in 2007, and high-school students when the iPad entered the scene, in 2010. A 2017 survey of more than 5,000 American teens found that three out of four owned an iPhone.

(08-03-2017, 11:39 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

Yes, more or less.

The thing that amazes me is how they can afford it. Parents seem to open their wallets to make this happen. I can't afford it.

(08-04-2017, 02:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I can understand letting a child have a 'dumb phone' (the sort that can do nothing more than transmit voice)   for reasons of personal safety. Get in trouble, call 911? See a crime, dial 911... call parents if you are going to be late getting home or are stuck in a strange place).  Parents can use the smart phone to figure out where the A&P on Sturgis Road in Kalamazoo, Michigan is. (There is no such location -- I use fictional locations)  One can get into big trouble because a smart phone gives one inappropriate confidence.

Children are not hurt by being behind the times on technology. Your great-grandparents may have lived without radio (let alone television, high-fidelity, video recording, computers, and smart phones). That was the least of their problems.

(08-07-2017, 11:14 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Evil people will create AI and machine learning systems to herd the sheep (or I should way, herd the sheep more effectively than already done).

(08-08-2017, 08:24 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The thing is, the headline for this article doesn't really come to the right conclusion.  It's not smartphones that are ruining people's lives, it's social media.  Teens aren't compulsively checking their phones throughout the night to look up facts or even to watch the latest pop video over again, they're checking for updates on whatever social media they use and seeing how many likes or whatever they have gotten.  As stated in the article, it has been documented that people who use facebook frequently are more likely to be depressed than those who do not.  Smart phones are simply making it easier to feed the addiction.

(08-08-2017, 08:24 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The thing is, the headline for this article doesn't really come to the right conclusion.  It's not smartphones that are ruining people's lives, it's social media.  Teens aren't compulsively checking their phones throughout the night to look up facts or even to watch the latest pop video over again, they're checking for updates on whatever social media they use and seeing how many likes or whatever they have gotten.  As stated in the article, it has been documented that people who use Facebook frequently are more likely to be depressed than those who do not.  Smart phones are simply making it easier to feed the addiction.

(08-08-2017, 08:24 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The thing is, the headline for this article doesn't really come to the right conclusion.  It's not smartphones that are ruining people's lives, it's social media.  Teens aren't compulsively checking their phones throughout the night to look up facts or even to watch the latest pop video over again, they're checking for updates on whatever social media they use and seeing how many likes or whatever they have gotten.  As stated in the article, it has been documented that people who use facebook frequently are more likely to be depressed than those who do not.  Smart phones are simply making it easier to feed the addiction.

(08-13-2017, 04:10 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-08-2017, 08:24 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The thing is, the headline for this article doesn't really come to the right conclusion.  It's not smartphones that are ruining people's lives, it's social media.  Teens aren't compulsively checking their phones throughout the night to look up facts or even to watch the latest pop video over again, they're checking for updates on whatever social media they use and seeing how many likes or whatever they have gotten.  As stated in the article, it has been documented that people who use facebook frequently are more likely to be depressed than those who do not.  Smart phones are simply making it easier to feed the addiction.

Precisely why some have started moving against it.  I would argue that the smarter ones in Gen Zed have already dropped out.  Xers like myself were never much enthused by it to start with.

(08-14-2017, 03:15 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-13-2017, 04:10 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-08-2017, 08:24 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The thing is, the headline for this article doesn't really come to the right conclusion.  It's not smartphones that are ruining people's lives, it's social media.  Teens aren't compulsively checking their phones throughout the night to look up facts or even to watch the latest pop video over again, they're checking for updates on whatever social media they use and seeing how many likes or whatever they have gotten.  As stated in the article, it has been documented that people who use facebook frequently are more likely to be depressed than those who do not.  Smart phones are simply making it easier to feed the addiction.

Precisely why some have started moving against it.  I would argue that the smarter ones in Gen Zed have already dropped out.  Xers like myself were never much enthused by it to start with.

"Smarter" is always a minority -- by definition.  The majority still wants validation.  These devices and their apps make that readily available and fully addictive.  I agree that a reaction will occur, and the smart will lead the way, just not yet.

(08-14-2017, 05:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If globalization and automation are tools of bondage, then maybe we would be wise to refuse to buy our own chains.

(08-14-2017, 04:38 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-14-2017, 03:15 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-13-2017, 04:10 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-08-2017, 08:24 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The thing is, the headline for this article doesn't really come to the right conclusion.  It's not smartphones that are ruining people's lives, it's social media.  Teens aren't compulsively checking their phones throughout the night to look up facts or even to watch the latest pop video over again, they're checking for updates on whatever social media they use and seeing how many likes or whatever they have gotten.  As stated in the article, it has been documented that people who use facebook frequently are more likely to be depressed than those who do not.  Smart phones are simply making it easier to feed the addiction.

Precisely why some have started moving against it.  I would argue that the smarter ones in Gen Zed have already dropped out.  Xers like myself were never much enthused by it to start with.

"Smarter" is always a minority -- by definition.  The majority still wants validation.  These devices and their apps make that readily available and fully addictive.  I agree that a reaction will occur, and the smart will lead the way, just not yet.

Minorities* are always the movers and shakers in society.  If it turned on the majority we'd be nothing more than domesticated cattle.  The back lash is being lead by a minority of Zeds and Millies now by the 2T, assuming society isn't destroyed in something stupid, social media will come to be seen as a networking tool and not a substitute for real world action and real world interactions.

*Note:  I mean minority as in a numerically smaller group and not the racial sense which honestly is stupid construction of stupid people pretending to be real academics.

(08-14-2017, 06:15 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-14-2017, 05:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If globalization and automation are tools of bondage, then maybe we would be wise to refuse to buy our own chains.

Globalization is bondage, but automation is not.  Every time humans have automated a job it has resulted in more goods, for less cost to more potential purchasers.  Unless of course your idea of a fun time is staring at the ass end of a mule for months out of they year.

(08-15-2017, 09:36 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-14-2017, 06:15 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-14-2017, 05:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If globalization and automation are tools of bondage, then maybe we would be wise to refuse to buy our own chains.

Globalization is bondage, but automation is not.  Every time humans have automated a job it has resulted in more goods, for less cost to more potential purchasers.  Unless of course your idea of a fun time is staring at the ass end of a mule for months out of they year.

Adding my $0.02: Automation has a terminal phase, where all work is automated.  We're a long way from that, but we had better start thinking about what this means, and start that thinking now!  The automatons are owned by capitalists, mostly through corporations.  What they produce, whether goods or services, have to be obtained by others with money (at least today).  If work is nonexistent, then the buyers will be few and far between.  

Essentially, this is a world of owners.  What about the rest of us?