Smartphones and social media are shaping young people in profound and as-yet not well understood ways, author and psychology professor Jean Twenge argues in
The Atlantic. “Born between
1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet,” she writes.
“I call them iGen.”
Read the whole story at The Atlantic »
It's easier to publish an alarmist article than to say things are OK. Correlation is not causation. The author notes that maybe already-unhappy teens may spend more time on their phones, which magnifies the effect. But the use of zoomed-in graphs, way past the zero point on the y-axis, is just plain deception. Very common among journalists but no less despicable. My own post-Millennial sons exhibit some of the traits revealed in this article but neither of them seemed concerned after reading the article.