Thursday, August 31, 2017

The Kids Today

I am very resistant to The Kids Today Aren't Like They Used To be arguments, but the phones man... the phones... This is long but interesting. The internet changed things, but the phones seem to have changed them more.

In this, too, she is typical. The number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been especially steep recently. It’s not only a matter of fewer kids partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out. That’s something most teens used to do: nerds and jocks, poor kids and rich kids, C students and A students. The roller rink, the basketball court, the town pool, the local necking spot—they’ve all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through apps and the web.

Spent some time with some teens and all they wanted to do was stare at their phones.