I would like to see this conversation turn from "Did phones cause these problems" to "Here's exactly how phones caused these problems". There are many ways to use technology, some better than others. We need literacy in these areas for both parents and children, and things are moving so fast, it's the companies that are getting to write the rules, not the culture. It's time for the culture to push back but we need to know how, specifically, the harm is being caused.
If we take the approach of not overthinking it, we might notice that many of these mental illnesses feature dissociation, and what does an iPhone do if not dissociate you from your physical being?
Teenagers (and younger) in their formative years are pouring a significant part of their lives into virtual environments and identities. Their digital lives are literally disconnected from their physical lives. Their sense of self is tied up in a system that has completely different rules and exists in some nebulous otherworld.
The physical basis for being is deprioritized and a new way of being is sitting uncomfortably alongside it.
Why doesn’t this affect everyone the same way? Some people are able to keep a lid on it, and reintegrate their iPhone lives into their real lives. Some people are not.
I can relate - in my late 20's and spent my teens and most of my early 20's online-only, just going outside long enough to go to college courses for IT.
I don't really know who I am as a person because I spent all my time online and not spending a lot of time with people. Not developing as a person, not realizing who I am and what I want to be. No social skills, etc.
Is it some kind of ego-death or personality-death? If not death, then something that hadn't been developed and is now far out of my grasp as my brain cements itself as I head into my 30's?
It sucks and I constantly remind myself of it, but maybe there's hope for the younger generations now that we've lived through the early stages of social media and know how it can harm the younger ones.
First though, we need to establish with enough certainty that whatever we are doing with phones is indeed the main culprit. I don't find it hard to believe to be honest, but we need something a bit more solid that this one correlation.
If it is phones, we'd have to have different experiments to investigate different possible methods of action. Is the content being consumed, is it something related to lack of physical interaction, is the anonymity promoting more hostility, etc.
Not entirely scientific, but I am sure you know many parents with kids. Mentally split them into 2 groups - those who let digital and social entertainment run free so they don't have to raise kids because its annoying and hard for them (any fool claiming raising kids today isn't hard didn't actually raise his/her kids) and those who often painstakingly severely limit/block screen time.
My friend, I can tell you from my personal perspective that the difference is staggering and very consistent. Anybody I ever talked about this shared same opinion. So there you have it, some opinions.
I want more specifics too, it would help tremendously to fight against it compared to 'technology=bad', but we still have no fucking clue how our brain works, how our personalities form etc. Without time machine, I don't think we get much further in this century (nor millennium). Just bunch of theories, some wilder than others, with variable amount of proofs out there in the wild. While people often can't have rational debate about basic aspects of life.
In your first paragraph you say that there is a huge difference but don't say what those differences are, which approach is better and what are the differences?
