Medical X-Press – Scott Canon
“Things that make life easier also change it. When you see somebody arguing on Reddit until 3 a.m. about the logic of Game of Thrones, that technology comes with a downside. Now we have the smartphone, an addictive device that makes junkies out of almost anybody who can afford one. The older we are, the more prone we are to trot out the kids-these-days worries about faces buried in screens. Yet something very real – and in ways unsettling – comes with all the iPhones and Androids. In an Atlantic article last week adapted from an upcoming book, psychologist Jean M. Twenge argues that growing up with smartphones and social media coincides with “abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states.” What she calls “iGen” – those born between 1995 and 2012 and raised with screens in their pockets – looks worse off than the generations that came before. She paints, at times with a particularly broad brush, a picture of lonely teenagers curled up in their beds obsessed with social media feeds that keep them awake at night and foster a sense of hopelessness. Yes, they’re less likely to drink, to get in car accidents and to have sex at an early age. But it’s because they just don’t get out much. They leave the house without their parents far less than kids who preceded them by just a few years.”(more)