Have smartphones destroyed a generation? | Hacker News Reader

Have smartphones destroyed a generation?

theatlantic.com

24 pointseadmund19 comments

First it was Generation Me in 2006 [1], then The Narcissism Epidemic in 2010 [2], and now iGen in 2017 [3]. All three books follow exactly the same pattern: stick a vapid and insulting nickname onto the latest generation, call that generation lonely and narcissistic, and blame it all on the latest technological innovations while completely ignoring the broader economic and social context. Each book directly contradicts the previous one and directly contracts her own previous studies [4], while simply reusing the same arguments and switching the target from generation to generation.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Americans-Confident-Assert...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Narcissism-Epidemic-Living-Age-Entitl...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy...

[4] https://www.livescience.com/52771-why-teens-are-happy-adults... "Very quickly, Twenge said, a pattern emerged: The eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders of today are happier than the eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders of previous decades."

Also, the whole "article" is an obvious advertisement for the author's book, your link #3.

I don't have the luxury to pay attention to most media or opinions administered by anyone older than 45, neuroplasticity loss can be really blatant when paired with decades of alcohol use, and they're all going to be dead or vegetative by the time a crisis comes, where in the past wiser and less pampered elders could have led us.

Certainly the parents are completely blameless.

I would like to think that at some point we would be able to look at the thousands of such claims made over hundreds of generation and admit that "this-generation-is-doomed" is a dumb rhetoric. If end-goal is human prosperity, how does it matter if some fad is getting popular among teenagers. What we should be looking at is trends.

Are smartphones inhibiting innovation by being addictive? I don't think so.

Although, an argument to be made against them is that they can induce FOMO-related stress than it was possible before. However, it seems to be double-edged sword. Exposure to more success is a simple result of people getting more connected. The plus-side of which is the wealth of information and experiences we have access to today.

Only as much as TVs, newspapers, radios, and hell, the Greek theater have destroyed generations.

Avoiding the silly title, a better question is the smartphone fundamentally different then those other mediums? The ability for addiction seems to indicate, to me at least, that the smartphone might be different.

You can become addicted to TV and this is widely portrayed in arts and entertainment

I think television and video games can be just as addictive.

Edit: And video games don't enable me to call my parents, look up a recipe, or check a map.

> The ability for addiction seems to indicate, to me at least, that the smartphone might be different.

Why is it different? Don't you remember folks sitting in front of TVs the whole day or night about 20 years back?

I think the difference is that you can't take a TV everywhere you go. Smartphones are ever-present. I agree with the comments that video games and TV can be just as addictive, it's just that, as the article points out, phones are often the first and last thing kids see each day.

I generally dislike framing entire generations as "doomed", but the data presented do at least suggest reason for concern. I actually read the article thinking that it is already/will get better over time with awareness, at least as it pertains to smartphone usage.

And back in the day TV was mostly passive. smartphone lets you choose what and when you want to do things.

If one looks at mental illness evolution, one might guess how different generations are across time; not necessarily caused by smartphones but surely and indicator of a generation's mental health.

> smartphone lets you choose

That's not really the case when apps are designed to make you come back to them the whole time like Facebook and Twitter.

Yeah I actually read the whole thing, the title is a terrible reflection of the actual content, which is thoughtful and makes no grand implications about a “ruined generation.”

It seems almost silly that 20 years ago, TV addiction was a huge thing. Nowadays who would get addicted to TV when you have tablets and smartphone who do TV plus one thousand other things

No, they haven't.

Uh I'm sitting right here.

Its a safe bet to say No... Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." * from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...

And you just invoked tome's law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549

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