The Smartphone Has Destroyed a Generation
A few years back, I walked into a pizza restaurant to get some takeout. While waiting for my order, I saw a group of eight girls sitting at a table, waiting for their pizza to arrive. None of them were making eye contact with the others. All I could see was the tops of eight heads and eight glowing screens. Sadly, this is a common sight.
Our kids' generation has grown up with smartphones. Some experts say that young people today have been part of a ten-year experiment to determine the effects of constant technological and social connection on our lives. The data is just coming in and is absolutely alarming.
In an article titled "Has the Smartphone Destroyed A Generation?" psychologist Jean M. Twenge writes in The Atlantic that parents should be alarmed. (I highly recommend that parents finish this short blog post and then take some time to read the entire article linked above.)
Among other things, Twenge writes that...
"Rates of teen depression have skyrocketted since 2011." (That's when smartphone use became more commonplace.)
Psychologically, teenagers today are "more vulnerable than millennials." (Millennials integrated smartphones into their lives while teenagers today have literally grown up with them.)
They are on "the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades." (We are just beginning to see the severity of the problem.)
What is the root cause?
Twenge says, "The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers' lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health."
Add to that a recent CDC study that found that suicide rates among teenage girls are at a 40 year high. The most obvious culprit is the power and influence of social media. Vulnerable girls already prone to insecurity or depression are fueling their pain with a constant stream of comparison. Twenty years ago, it hurt to not get invited to the party. Today, our kids get to see pictures of all they missed. This stuff hurts deeply.
As my youth minister friend Chris Trent says, "Constant connection means constant influence." While your teenager might be physically present in your home, he is likely far more connected to the influence of his peers than the influence of his family. If that influence is primarily negative (and it usually is), our kids' well-being will suffer. That will be the case unless you do something about it.
Smartphones 101 is a great tool to talk about smartphones with your kids.
If smartphones are supposed to make our kids happy, then why are so many kids miserable. A longitudinal study by The National Institute on Drug Abuse found that "teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy."
What is a parent to do?
Sadly, the writer of The Atlantic article writes something potentially discouraging to parents. She says, "I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic demand to impose on a generation of kids so accustomed to being wired at all times."
The solution is not to take away your kids’ phones, but to be intentional to guide your kids to use them with wisdom. It requires offering some oversight and creating some parameters for their use.
Parents who love their kids and want something better for them have to be willing to do hard things: the stuff that their kids won't like in the short term but that will benefit them in the long term. This is what parents have done for generations.
Here's some help…
We have recently launched Smartphones 101, a new digital course that families go through together. It contains 10 short videos and discussion guides that cover all the things that you need to talk about with your kids: social media, texting, relationships in the digital world, explicit content, predators, and more. It also gives specific details on how to safely set up a teenager’s phone and an editable smartphone contract you can use with your kids. Click below for the details: