Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
The Atlantic posted this article under the above headline. My answer: No. (I think I may have snorted as well.) The article is lengthy, but it presents statistics and research suggesting the generation of current teenagers (referred to as iGen) have been made unhappy, socially inept, and unprepared for the real world by smart phones and social media. It's a slightly more nuanced take than that summation, but, to me, the tone felt accusatory, as if teenagers have both had this thrusted upon them by an ill-intentioned society but are simultaneously culpable for their own demise by refusing to put down their phones and go play outside. I'm not sure the author, Jean Twenge, is making an argument in the article, rather presenting stats and analysis, which I appreciate, because I feel I've read far too many thinkpieces on how millenials have killed the housing industry and the napkin industry and all sorts of products that have died at the hands of tech-obsessed millenial