Hysteria? There’s nothing new in smart phone moral panic :)
COLUMNIST
We can imagine the world when the Millennials are the pre-eminent generation. When the baby boomers are long gone and generation Xers are dribbling in old people’s homes, the Millennials will have their day.
But they will be lost, unable to function without a smart phone, unable to keep the system going without Snapchatting heavily filtered selfies of themselves to one another.
The population’s collective intelligence, in decline since the invention of the TV, will reach its nadir.
Progress will halt, society crumble.
Crippled by their addiction to technology and communicating puerile messages on social media, it will be the beginning of the end for civilisation; cities will fall, people will regress to the subsistence lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer.
If we believe the latest moral panic over the apparent dependence young people have on their mobile phones, then the future is fairly bleak.
A much-shared and much-read piece in the latest edition of the US magazine The Atlantic highlighted in frightening detail just how enslaved the modern young person has become by technology.
I’m calling the afflicted generation Millennials, the Atlantic actually labels them as the iGeneration. A bit younger than Millennials, they’re today’s up-and-coming teen.
“There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives – and making them seriously unhappy,” author Jean M Twenge writes.
The American psychologist has been studying these youngsters – prolific Instagram users and Snapchat finding out what’s happening to them and how they are developing under the ubiquity of the smart phone.
“I’ve observed my toddler, barely old enough to walk, confidently swiping her way through an iPad. I’ve experienced my six-year-old asking for her own cellphone. I’ve overheard my nine-year-old discussing the latest app to sweep the fourth grade. Prying the phone out of our kids’ hands will be difficult, even more so than the quixotic efforts of my parents’ generation to get their kids to turn off MTV and get some fresh air.”
Sleep deprivation, depression, undeveloped social skills – these are the worrying effects smart phone dependence is having on this generation, argues Twenge. will
Experience of adolescence is being eroded, the development of an entire generation being disrupted as hours of their day are taken up by using the phone.
It’s a frightening read for parents, already doing battle bringing children up in a rapidly changing world.
As the dad of a one-year-old already snatching my iPhone off me whenever he sets eyes on it, how I will manage his natural human needs with his desire to have stuff is something I’m already beginning to think about.
For the moment, phones are secreted away and the tablet used only to play calming music.
The moral headaches brought about by technology are yet to come.
We are, almost all, smart phone junkies now.
Rarely are we without our phones: messaging, reading, playing, photographing, scrolling.
They can at once be the most antisocial of inventions and the most social – sating our innate need to be connected and feel a part of a community, while also disconnecting us from the present and cocooning us from the reality of our situation, no matter how enthralling or boring that might be. But haven’t we been here before? With each new technological fad there is inevitable hysteria about its effects. I’m not sure the time I spent in front of the telly growing up inhibited my growth as a person – but I seem to be functioning OK in my adult life, with the odd blip here and there, despite the scare stories about the effects of sitting in front of the box.
There might well seem to be an increase in “psychological distress” of the iGen – but that could just as much be down to the strides made in identifying and talking about mental illness.
Acknowledging the issues associated with smart phone omnipresence sign that we’re ensuring they don’t afflict us with problems further down the line.