Current Events > is this piece about smartphone use among youth overblown, or on target?

(+) Yeah! (+)

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

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.

At first I presumed these might be blips, but the trends persisted, across several years and a series of national surveys. The changes weren’t just in degree, but in kind. The biggest difference between the Millennials and their predecessors was in how they viewed the world; teens today differ from the Millennials not just in their views but in how they spend their time. The experiences they have every day are radically different from those of the generation that came of age just a few years before them.

What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.
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this is kinda crazy, too:

But the allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today’s teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009


I graduated from HS in 2007 and myspace was a big deal, but smart phones were still pretty new and cell phone plans didnt' have unlimited data as a standard. the Razr was popular my senior year iirc

imagine being a kid today
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I got bored reading the whole thing and ended up skimming a bunch of it but it doesn't seem to provide any evidence of actual causation over correlation.
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Balrog0 posted...

I graduated from HS in 2007 and myspace was a big deal, but smart phones were still pretty new and cell phone plans didnt' have unlimited data as a standard. the Razr was popular my senior year iirc

ditto, graduated in 2004 and frequently i would tell my parents "I'm going out." and would come back reeking of pot and/or vagina with bad hygiene. once covered in my own vomit.

my parents asked no questions and had no concerns. other than that time i drove home and my car was 'missing' its rear view mirror.
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Darkman124 posted...

my parents asked no questions and had no concerns.

My parents always just told me to call if I was to be out later than expected and only really ever said "just be safe". They believe children learn by doing and making mistakes, but I have a pretty safe personality to start with so I seldom ever put myself out there.
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