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Half Of Teens Think They're Addicted To Their Smartphones (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new poll confirms just how much teens depend on their phones. Fifty percent of teens feel they are addicted to their mobile devices, according to the poll, which was conducted for Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on helping children, parents, teachers and policymakers negotiate media and technology. A larger number of parents, 59%, said their teens were addicted. The poll involved 1,240 interviews with parents and their children, ages 12 to 18. "Technological addiction can happen to anyone," said digital detox expert Holland Haiis. "If your teens would prefer gaming indoors, alone, as opposed to going out to the movies, meeting friends for burgers or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem."
Gaming indoors is the modern teen camaraderie:
- Invites communication & collaborative strategy
- Experiencing win/lose attitudes
Movies are the epitome of anti-social:
- sit silently in the dark, opposing all who talk, to be indoctrinated.
Driving age is over 18 in many areas, or over 19 with passengers, so how are the "teens" supposed to get to this burger place?
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
I survived being grounded, without long-lasting repercussions. They'll survive.
Kids need to learn that there are consequences for their actions, while those consequences are relatively minor.
As a parallel, I ended up getting a better job at work because the guy that was the lead tested several of us out, "borrowing" us for some larger jobs. One of the guys that lost-out did so because he couldn't stop texting to focus on the damn job.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They're not entitled to smartphones. Why not take them away?
And then what? Okay so you've taken the phone away, it is not like they are just going to say, "Oh gee, my phone is gone, I guess I'll do things that I don't normally do." It's like people who yell, "Oh just take food stamps away and people will magically get jobs." People just don't magically change overnight and just simply taking a phone away for any short length of time isn't fixing a perceived problem. Allow them to use it for only an hour a day? That's not going to fix jack all that does is make the whole effort an exercise in futility.
What needs to be done, is to teach a level of responsibility that is required to use these devices. You know how you have to teach a kid to drive like a sane human being? And how that just doesn't happen overnight? Yeah, it's like that. Except we've had cars for quite some time now so we're all pretty on the up and up about what responsible "is". Not so much for phones (we are getting there though). What's the responsible level? Using the phone only to answer calls? Allow at least thirty minutes outside? There's not even a rough outline as to what "responsible" is for phone usage, the only thing people can squarely lay their fingers on is what ISN'T responsible. Like don't use it while watching a movie, don't use it while driving, get out of the house every once and awhile (how often being highly subjective) And so on.
So all of that said, we're still in an infant stage of smartphones and yeah, we're going to be complete morons when it comes to them, congrats CNN for pointing out the blindingly obvious about the human condition. But arbitrarily saying, "Oh just take them away" is also NOT going to solve jack crap. We're going to have to develop through trail and error what we think is best and that's going to take a lot of time to eventually figure that out. And that is the reason "just take them away" does not work, it arguably runs counter to everything we know that might actually work. We're just going to have to grin and bear it and work though this as painful as that sounds.
Which brings me more to the point of...
If your teens would prefer gaming indoors, alone, as opposed to going out to the movies, meeting friends for burgers or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem.
Building friends and have a close network of peers is clearly a more favorable position than the opposite. However, the thing I have a problem with is the idea that we still need to go out to the movies or get burgers or any of that other crap to build those things. The methods for how people have met, developed friendship, and created long lasting bonds has always evolved. Note how we don't usually go out on fox hunts with hounds and horseback nonsense to get our monthly get together in. Or how we have a lot fewer formal balls. Etc. We change how we do these things as time marches forward. Am I saying that Facebook is a perfect replacement? Not By A Long Shot. Are we too entrenched into phones? Yeah, more than likely. But saying that the way to counter all of that is to just put the phone down and ignore that the last 30 years happened is just silly. We don't have the answer to how to bring society out of the zombie inducing smartphone era, but I assure you, we're going to have to get use to the idea that the answer very well might include the smartphone in some sort of fashion. Better or worse we've got this new thing and it isn't leaving anytime soon.
So TL;DR the answer to "Why not take them away?" Because it won't work. That's just not how humans operate. For better or worse we're going to have to slowly and painfully figure this crap out and society as a whole will slowly evolve the answers. CNN's piece is so infuriating because it is devoid of anyone talking about actual solutions. It just keeps repeating over and over, "this is a problem, this is a prob