Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

An interesting opinion article that I found on the website of The Atlantic, I actually think the change the author is mentioning started a bit earlier, just look at the over-the-top adulation of Obama during his election campaign (Which to his credit he recognized as being damaging, and for the record I think he did the best job he could under the circumstances.)

Quote:

I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation. Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.

http://ift.tt/2xiMexu

I am not fully agreeing with the authors thesis, but something has happened, and as a member of Generation X, I am starting to worry about what is going to happen when the IGeneration reaches the age I am now.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2woN1Au