While books reduced the frequency at which we practiced memorization, and thus diminished the average effectiveness of that process in man, they also paved the way for new developments and enabled us to devote further cognitive resources to other kinds of processes (e.g. pattern recognition, experimentation, etc.).
Smart phones, I'd wager, have a similar effect, in a perhaps more extreme fashion.
In spite of this, memory remains incredibly important...somehow taking the effort to memorize something, perhaps because it requires approaching the material repeatedly, also often leads to a richer understanding of the material--at least that's what I find.
I'm constantly shocked and embarrassed at the frequent fragility of my own memory, and my own susceptibility to distraction--and I spend no time on the common distraction centers of our epoch (facebook, twitter, etc.)--still, constant, reliable, and immediate access to the internet is enough to hold your attention hostage.
Another unfortunate side effect, I think, is a general decline in the practice of self-reflection. The most impressive people I know make a point to spend some amount of time in their day doing nothing more than thinking or reflecting--i.e. engaging with their thoughts alone--an endeavor that's ever more difficult to undertake when we're constantly bombarded with alerts and entertainment. There's some merit to those old disciplines of prayer and meditation--even if some of their attendant metaphysics seem antiquated.
The difference between books and smart phones is such that there are a theoretically limited number of ways you could use the book. You can partake of its knowledge, memorize it as an exercise, rip it up, burn it, draw all over it, etc etc. But for the most part its main purpose is its primary purpose.
Phones as they are called, aren't so much phones anymore. They're a complete mobile computing system. All of publicly accessible human knowledge is at the fingertips of whoever has one with a live connection to the internet. You can do just about anything with them, abilities dependent.
I remind my girlfriend of this all the time as she's lying curled up on the couch playing candy crush :P
"Smartphone" and "internet" are two separate categories, and the former is strongly associated variously low-value, deliberately-addicting behaviors. The internet still has valuable corners, but the action is now where the monitization's at.
High school (and younger!) kids (generally) using their smartphones for stuff like getting streaks on Snapchat, not turning themselves into autodidacts.
You're asking me to provide you evidence of a widely written about social phenomena while simultaneously claiming to know about my youth and what my parents thought about my activities?
>>> Most of the profitable skills I know are self-taught, from the internet.
If you want to know more about how the current smartphone and internet ecosystem is deliberately designed to be addictive, I suggest you go teach yourself from the internet. A lot's been written the last few months.
While you're at it, read up on loot boxes, since you seem to be interested in computer games.
You don't need a smartphone to engage in gambling or other addictive behaviors. If children are seeking out skinner boxes it might be worth exploring why they aren't getting fulfillment out of their life.
Possibility: they got hooked on skinner boxes before finding out about the other wonders life offers.
> You know your parents said the same about you with your computer games. In reality, yes you played games, you also learned more.
This is quite the claim. I know many smart people who played video games. And I know plenty dumb people who play video games.
This isn't just generation to generation. Many on here are looking at their own generation. Kids are not the only ones playing candy crush.
They probably did lead to degradation of human memory--not in the underlying capabilities, of course, but in how well most people are able to use them.
There is some interesting discussion of this in Joshua Foer's book "Moonwalking with Einstein" [1]. Before books were widespread learning ways to use memory quickly and efficiently was important to scholars and others who worked with large amounts of information. Afterwards, it was good enough to just go with your raw, untrained memory, and the old memory techniques were almost forgotten.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remember...
And I'd hazard that they were right. However the degradation wasn't catastrophic because searching books is hard, so people still had to develop their memories.
Damaging? No. More limiting? Possibly.