Blog Deep Dive: Is My SmartPhone Hurting Me?

     

Is My Smartphone Hurting Me?

After reading the two articles I now have a deeper understanding of what our generation has become. The first article talked about the differences in childhood behaviors between GenZ, which is my generation, and GenX which is my parent's generation. She first talked about the ways  GenX’s would go about their day being social butterflies and then compared us to them and she basically described our generation to be very lonely. “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.”  (Twenge 4) It was shocking to hear the differences in data between the two generations. It is crazy to think about how these little handheld devices have such a huge impact on our lives. Throughout the article, Jean frequently mentioned the active differences between the two generations but then started talking about the biggest effects smartphones have had on our generation. “The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression”(Twenge 7). This fact didn't exactly surprise me but it opened my eyes to how big of a negative impact smartphones have on teens. Although there are many sources of data showing the negative impacts of smartphones, the second article challenged those ideas and actually brought about positive effects of smartphones on our generation. “this generation has sharply lower rates of alcohol use, teen pregnancies, unprotected sex, smoking, and car accidents than previous generations”(Cavanagh). This evidence proves that not all effects of smartphones are bad for our generation. Even though there are many negative factors that may come from the use of smartphones, there are also many positive effects from them. “For instance, teens can find other teens interested in the same social movements, connect with teens across the globe on interests like music and fashion, and feel embedded in a social network filled with meaning”(Cavanagh). In my opinion, our generation isn't corrupt because of the use of smartphones. I believe people are just afraid of how drastically we are changing and how the increase in technology is changing the world, so people are afraid of how developed our generation has and will become. So, they decide to call our generation corrupt or broken because we have become so successful in understanding the minds, bodies, and behaviors of people. How do data collectors today know if teens were depressed or not back then without the new technology created today? Who is to say they weren't or were even more depressed than teens are now? They didn't have the high technology like we do now, so how would they know without proof? All of these questions and thoughts remind me of a debate topic I did last year about whether social media was good or bad. The entire time I was researching and looking for evidence of good effects all I could find was negative effects. People only see social media as something bad and don't even bother looking at the positive effects. This is just like the smartphones. They do not want people to think phones are a good thing because children somehow aren't living their childhood like their parents did when they were younger, but isn’t that the whole point of the creation of smartphones? Instead of having a single line to call, they created a device so people could go places with a phone instead of having one on the wall in the house. They created them to change the future, not keep it the same. So of course there are going to be changes in the behaviors of children, that was the point. I don't even remember the first phone I got because I would always use my parents. My phone was never a necessary thing for me to have and it still isn't. But the difference is now that the world has created a place where I  always have to have my phone. For emergencies, you have to call 911 on your phone, pay from your phone, communicate through texting and calling, etc. The world now revolves around technology so people can’t say it's such a negative thing, they wouldn't be able to share their opinions with the world without smartphones so that's one positive already.