A teenagers perspective. Can we blame all the downfalls of a generation on technology?

Guest post by Elli Mulkey, age 15, High School Junior

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Technology Takeover
As time goes on, everything around us is aging: ourselves, trees in the backyard, the dog sleeping next to you, the technology in your hands. The article Post-Millennials! Please Go Drink And Smoke And Have Sex In The Woods by Mark Morford is blaming all technology on how kids are these days. The author wrote that “we might be one of the most narcissistic generations, ever.” Smart devices aren’t the only thing wrong in this generation, they have given us great advantages. Can we really blame all the downfalls of a generation on an object?

First I want to state that I can agree with what Morford is writing. There are people out there who can’t go one minute without talking about himself/herself or can’t go one minute without their phone glued to their hand. I believe that the generation with complete tech takeover is starting at the class of 2021. Those kids have been exposed to smart technology since they were born. Most of them that I know all had any model iPhone as their first phone. It opened them up to a world that they weren’t ready for. For my first phone I had a Pantech Pursuit, same goes for my friends. Those chunky little flip phones came with texting, calling, and no data. I wasn’t even sure what data was at the time. Now in restaurants I see babies already with an iPad stuck to their lap. It’s insane to me that a parent would rather give their child a show to watch instead of trying to have a nice family night out. Whatever happened to crayons and paper?

Morford writes how our generation is arrogant and narcissistic. A reason for that could be the media. It makes people post/show the better part of themselves (appearance.) You could say it’s fishing for compliments to feel better about themselves or they know it already and wanna show it off. Which is why that’s a good example of the selfishness in the generation.

This article has brought up so many opinions from different people in our classroom and I believe all of them to be valid. They brought up statistics, like the rate of depression increasing and the decline of dating/going out. Now that we have this smart phone with media and all that jazz, we don’t need to go out anymore right? Well how did we get that smart phone? How did the cyber bullying start on your profile? We have to remember that behind every screen starts with a human being. When I saw that baby in the restaurant the parent was the one who had given him/her the iPad. It’s not like a baby can go to the store and buy one itself. If human beings are the ones controlling technology we should be able to use it in an appropriate way.

Personally, I don’t like to go on my phone very much. I try to stay off it as much as possible when I’m with my friends, it allows me to talk more with them or have “thinking time” when there is the occasional stop in the conversation. People believe that going on social media and scrolling through their feed is a stress reliever or just a way to relax, and it is.  But there is a difference between those people, and those who don’t have self control. They go to a point where they are on their phone and find themselves in the same place an hour or two later.

Like I said in the beginning of my piece, technology is advancing. So I don’t expect to see every little kid with a chunky flip phone. I expect to see this privilege with more restriction when it comes to the accessibility of data and media. To me it’s an easy choice. I would rather be out there in the world exploring everything as much as possible. I don't want to just look at pictures of beautiful places, I want to see them and then go after it myself. You only get to experience this universe once so why would you live it in a phone?

Morford, Mark. “Post-Millennials! Please Go Drink and Smoke and Have Sex in the Woods.” SFGate, 4 Aug. 2017, www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Post-Millennials-Please-go-drink-and-smoke-and-11734766.php.

Twenge, Jean M. “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 4 Aug. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/.