How the smartphone destroyed a generation

Impacts of Smartphones On Young Generation

One of the fast-growing sectors in terms of technology is communication. The use of smartphones makes communication easy and sharing of pictures and videos can be done regardless of where people are in the world. The use of the smartphones has had an impact on the younger generation in a positive and a negative way. When we look at the Positive side, smartphones enable young people to stay connected to relatives and friends regardless of the distance between them. This strengthens their bond as they talk and share memories through social networking platforms. On the negative, people are more willing to communicate online due to the convenience brought by mobile phones; thus they have fewer opportunities to meet and physically socialize. The main purpose of the paper is to understand the impacts of smartphones on the young generation and whether they are destroying or building young people. In my opinion, smartphones would bring more positive effects and help our generation develop better if their use could be controlled.

In a free weekly newsletter from the Atlantic daily by Jean Twenge, she mentions that smartphones are destroying the young generation’s social lives. Most of the young people are spending much of their time on the phones chatting and sharing media file that they miss out on having real life connections, experiences and relationships. Before smartphones were introduced, young people were spending time together playing or in social functions which helped them to grow and understand what goes in the social structure of life . Nowadays, they prefer staying at home with their phones on social media platforms because that is what they value most. As long as they can connect with friends and other people through social media, they do not value meeting the real people and spending time together. They do not value social activities or any outdoor activity because the phones have not allowed them to do so. The young generation can opt not to attend parties and other social gatherings so that they can spend time in the room with a smartphone chatting with their friends. The time they spend on their phones could also be used to do something productive and which can have a positive impact on their future. It could be spent learning a sport that can eventually secure them a scholarship when they are older, or even a career.

In an article named “Stop Googling. Let’s talk,” the author says, that some of the young generations give more attention to their phones more than they do to the actual people. The article states that they have no time to spend with their families as they are always on their smartphones having conversations with other people, and when they are with the other people, are talking to their families on the phone. Some of them even lack social interaction skills because they are used to having conversations with their fingers and having a conversation with people online rather than actual people. It becomes hard for that generation to express itself because they are not used to having face to face conversations, interactions or confrontations. Cases have happened where some students who have completed their studies cannot express themselves in an interview, simply because they are used to only having discussions online . In my opinion, being among the avid users of mobile phones, we tend to block out a lot that goes into communication. The fact that you can talk to someone instantly, without the need to walk long hours, use the bus or drive all the way to where they are and yet relay your message instantly allows one to be lazy and prefer to sit band and use your thumbs. Communication becomes a passive activity, rather than an active activity that involves emotion, body language and so much more.

In Twenge's view, smartphones play a crucial part in causing depression among young people. This is because smartphones are creating non-social behavior among young people. Some of them are no longer just worried about the bullies in school, they are subject to cyber bullying, which is with them everywhere they go. Twenge states in her article, “But at the generational level, when teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.” They do not know how to interact with the real people, and to some point become sad and fall into depression due to what is portrayed online about them .

On the plus side, mobile phones have opened up the young to billions of ideas, loads of information and an international network of friends. When I was young, my best friend moved to another country, more than 3000 miles away. I was deeply affected at first since he was the one we always used to hang around with. When mobile phones came, I was able to call him through the parent’s phones, and we would catch up. That really meant a lot. Now, we snap chat and talk on social media every other day. We also have science projects together that we work on individually but team up to solve problems on. This is greatly due to the ability to communicate through the internet.

Will smartphones destroy our generation? Like every other piece of technology, how we use it is matters most. Like a knife that should be used to prepare food, there are those that use it as a deadly weapon. This is how we should look at the benefits of using a mobile phone for its sole purpose, to ease communication and create an access or gateway to information. In the article “Don’t Take Away Your Teen’s phone,” by Guernsey; smartphones have not destroyed the young generation because they help them share information with their friends, relatives and parents. The author states that “Sometimes the young people could be far from their parents or relatives and can have pressing needs which need to be addressed by them” (Guernsey, 2017). We can use smartphones to communicate with our family and friends whenever we have internet around the world. The author claims that although she could not deny the changes influenced by smartphones in which her daughter holds her phone every day, teens are still sharing good moments with their loved ones, and they end up being happy. That helps them avoid stress. The conversation made with their friends and family members warrants them less worry and anxiety.

Before the age and era of smartphones, people would go for weeks, even months without talking to their loved ones. They would worry if all was well, they would not be able to know if they were well, they would not celebrate achievements with them and they would totally be oblivious of their well-being, but today, all that has changed. They now speak every day. Parents are more in touch and in control of their children’s ware bouts than ever before. They celebrate birthdays, graduations, wins and accomplishments on calls, video charts and even conference calls. If they have a bad day, they can talk to their loved ones about it, and get some comfort to know that someone they love cares about them as well.

Smartphones help create awareness about the contemporary issues which might be affecting society. In her article, Guernsey mentions talking to her daughter who says, “it is also through the internet, on sites such as Tumblr, where teens often find comfort and can engage in discussions of how they are feeling.” Teenagers get to read some of the issues that would affect them on the internet and become conversant with new trends in the society. Sharing news with their friends enables them to take appropriate action when faced with a challenge, and keeps them informed about how to handle it. Learning from and agreeing with Guernsey, although it is true that teens tend to spend most of their time on their smartphones; overall they can relieve some stress by expressing themselves and their feelings to their friends, and they also have more opportunities to learn new things every day. They can get motivated to work on their dreams, they can find information to make themselves better at what they do, and they can engage with professionals who can eventually mentor them in the right path.

In conclusion, smartphones in our society now still have positive and negative effects. My opinion is we cannot live without the convenience of our phones, but we are free to choose what we do with them and what has more priority when it comes to choosing time spent online or physically with friends and loved ones. We should use our phones efficiently to build relationships or gain useful knowledge instead of wasting time doing counterproductive things on them. Overall, whether smartphones will have a positive or a negative impact solely depends on how we choose to use them, for what purposes and according to our priorities.

References

JEAN M. TWENGE. (2017). Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?. More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

Lin, T. T., Chiang, Y. H., & Jiang, Q. (2015). Sociable people beware? Investigating smartphone versus nonsmartphone dependency symptoms among young Singaporeans. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 43(7), 1209-1216.

LISA GUERNSEY. (2017). Don’t Take Away Your Teen’s Phone. Smartphones are linked to problems, but they haven’t “destroyed a generation.”