[haswell]

Anecdotally, almost everyone I know laments the decline of real social contact in recent years, and everywhere I go, people are buried in their phones, ignoring the real world around them. Social media discourse is more toxic than ever, and yet it continues to be a major aspect of people’s social contact.

For sake of argument, let’s say the issue is their families. Why are so many families turning out to be harmful environments?

My pet theory is that this erosion of social contact and propagation of toxicity is affecting all of us, so it seems natural that many family environments will suffer.

I think it’s too simplistic to conclude that “teens using phones” is the whole issue, but do think that phones and the underlying tech they currently represent is responsible for causing major systemic issues that in turn tend to effect teens more.

Singling out the suicide rate as a proxy for mental health seems like a major problem.

[j-bos]

I've noticed people make much less eye contact with strangers, when I was young I only ever saw that in NYC (I imagines the same in other big cities). Today I see that everywhere except the boonies, smaller than small towns.

[soupfordummies]

"It's not the phones, it's the parents (who are on their phones nearly as much)"

[abnercoimbre]

I recently bought a Rugrats Comic Book. Re-imagined for modern times, it shows how the babies are "being watched" by some all-knowing entity while the adults are absent in their formative years.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW.

The comic is a criticism of surveillance devices on children and the smartphone addiction of adults. (Even the adults were zombified in their interactions with each other.) Tommy's solution was to rally the babies to drown all devices in water -- and to continue breaking them until their parents gave up buying new ones.