Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic

[Cura_te_ipsum]

We see it in medical students: immature developmental social skills, lack of skill sets to interact with patients and peers, playing on their laptops / phones during lectures, heads buried in their electronic devices during clinical rotations and rounds, terrified to meet with faculty to address questions or seek help.

Be aware of your interactions with your peers. Many of them can help you get ahead if you make yourself mindful of your surroundings. Patients expect their physicians to show up for them. Be cognizant of the impact you can have in the medical setting when you make yourself fully present for patients. Eye contact can provide crucial information in a matter of seconds

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

In my conversations with teens, I saw hopeful signs that kids themselves are beginning to link some of their troubles to their ever-present phone. Athena told me that when she does spend time with her friends in person, they are often looking at their device instead of at her. “I’m trying to talk to them about something, and they don’t actually look at my face,” she said. “They’re looking at their phone, or they’re looking at their Apple Watch.” “What does that feel like, when you’re trying to talk to somebody face-to-face and they’re not looking at you?,” I asked. “It kind of hurts,” she said. “It hurts. I know my parents’ generation didn’t do that. I could be talking about something super important to me, and they wouldn’t even be listening.”

Once, she told me, she was hanging out with a friend who was texting her boyfriend. “I was trying to talk to her about my family, and what was going on, and she was like, ‘Uh-huh, yeah, whatever.’ So I took her phone out of her hands and I threw it at my wall.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You play volleyball,” I said. “Do you have a pretty good arm?” “Yep,” she replied.​

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[wizzed101]

We see it in medical students: immature developmental social skills, lack of skill sets to interact with patients and peers, playing on their laptops / phones during lectures, heads buried in their electronic devices during clinical rotations and rounds, terrified to meet with faculty to address questions or seek help.

Is this a new meme?

 

[CloverBale]

 

[JustintheDoctor]

Guess where I'm reading this...


On my phone

 

[ChymeofPassion]

Disappointed in the change of your profile pic

 

[Med Ed]

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

"Destroyed" might be a bit hyperbolic, but it would not surprise me if smartphones have disrupted traditional communication patterns enough to generate some serious unintended consequences.

 

[CloverBale]

Disappointed in the change of your profile pic

The fun people at SDN messaged me and said my image was "inappropriate" and that I had to take it down

 

[aaronrodgers]

there's been a lot of medical school vloggers, not that I mind, just an observation of what will be the norm. I personally would avoid vlogging my professional life.

 

[863168]

The same pathetic cash grab for Baby Boomer money that you've seen many times before. P.S. She's using the article to advertise her book. Read stupid books, win stupid prizes.

 

[863168]

When she wants more money she'll likely publish competing views biannually about how there should be considerations separating the millennials every 6 months. After all you can never predict the behavior of The Snake People. Btw, I didn't know who she was before this thread, but I know a cash grab from a mile away.

 

[sliceofbread136]

Smart phones are an amazing asset and tool for medicine. Never before has a near endless amount of information been so easily available

 

[Gilakend]

there's been a lot of medical school vloggers, not that I mind, just an observation of what will be the norm. I personally would avoid vlogging my professional life.

I'm pretty hooked on those YouTube channels. I have 4 that I always watch the new vids the same day. Pretty much only channels I follow.

 

[aformerstudent]

The 90's were better. Hard to explain. You would have to had grown up in the 90's to understand. In the 90's you had REAL friends not 2000 Facebook friends who are NOT your friends BTW. TV was better, music was MUCH better and on CD's which are better than most MP3's, sports were better, people were more classy, the world wasn't crazy, and technology was constantly changing which was fun. In 1990 nobody really had cell phones but in 1999 almost everybody had Nokia bricks.

Smartphones are cool but too much of anything is not good. Sometimes I'm stunned how much time I spend on my phone or the internet when I could be using that to read a book or hang out with real people.

 

[ReapPremed]

Just like television, rock and rock, and ragtime...

I will say she is on the money about modern child-rearing practices being weird. Eight-year-olds used to mind sheep. Recently an 18-year-old premed had her dad with her when interviewing for a volunteer slot in our lab.

Looks like lots of spurious correlations. Is it all due to screen-time alone or some larger cultural shift? She doesn't really address that awkward teens might just be drawn to online interaction instead of brooding in the dark corners of some comic book shop, or AV/chess club meeting... are these kids just more visible now through social media and bullying as a national issue? Does the way we talk about mental health, now, rather than 20 years ago influence responsivity and honesty on these kinds of surveys?

 

[Turkishking]

To some certain extent. Waiting for class to start, everybody's eyes are laser focused right on their bright phones. Or even during class it's kind of annoying. Also what else is annoying, Instagram and twiiter.

 

[Terry Toma]

I can certainly see how technology addiction is problematic at the individual level, but I really haven't seen any evidence of the population-level mass erosion of social skills that I keep hearing about. I graduated from college before smartphones were widespread, and returned to finish my prereqs after they were ubiquitous. I really don't see any difference in social skills between my cohort and the college kids I interact with today.

Sure, there are a lot of kids who play with their phones while they wait for class to start. Ten years ago, those same kids would have just buried their noses in a newspaper instead. We've always been good at finding ways to ignore each other.

 

[Lucca]

what if phones, but too much?

 

[Goro]

I will say she is on the money about modern child-wearing practices being weird. Eight-year-olds used to mind sheep. Recently an 18-year-old premed had her dad with her when interviewing for a volunteer slot in our lab.

 

[WingedOx]

Considering the difficulty that some people have interpreting social cues in written language on these forums, I'm not sure that they should be the ones to complain about how people interact in real life.

 

[hat]

.

 

[WingedOx]

The 90's were better. Hard to explain. You would have to had grown up in the 90's to understand. In the 90's you had REAL friends not 2000 Facebook friends who are NOT your friends BTW. TV was better, music was MUCH better and on CD's which are better than most MP3's, sports were better, people were more classy, the world wasn't crazy, and technology was constantly changing which was fun. In 1990 nobody really had cell phones but in 1999 almost everybody had Nokia bricks.

Smartphones are cool but too much of anything is not good. Sometimes I'm stunned how much time I spend on my phone or the internet when I could be using that to read a book or hang out with real people.

NuMetal FTW.

 

[Lawpy]

 

[kitkat13]

The fun people at SDN messaged me and said my image was "inappropriate" and that I had to take it down

Lol for the old pic who was that a pic of?

 

[Goro]

What did the OP do to get banned? Troll respawn?

 

[WingedOx]

What did the OP do to get banned? Troll respawn?

did you, like, actually read his posts?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

The 90's were better. Hard to explain. You would have to had grown up in the 90's to understand. In the 90's you had REAL friends not 2000 Facebook friends who are NOT your friends BTW. TV was better, music was MUCH better and on CD's which are better than most MP3's, sports were better, people were more classy, the world wasn't crazy, and technology was constantly changing which was fun. In 1990 nobody really had cell phones but in 1999 almost everybody had Nokia bricks.

Smartphones are cool but too much of anything is not good. Sometimes I'm stunned how much time I spend on my phone or the internet when I could be using that to read a book or hang out with real people.

I mostly disagree. The 90s weren't better, they were just different. But it would have been awesome to have the technology then that we do today. Technology isn't bad, and kids having access to the entire fund of human knowledge is a great thing for the most part.

Your complaints take very avoidable problems and generalize them across a generation. I have like 100 friends on Facebook. Almost all of them are either family I don't see very often or people I've gotten close to in the Navy and moved away from but want to stay in touch. I am on Facebook once a day most days.

My wife has like 800 friends on Facebook. She still interacts plenty with people in real life and spends tons of time outside.

90s music was awesome. 90s cartoons were awesome. 90s movies mostly suck.

The couple generations before us had macro technology booms. They were easier to adjust to because not everyone suddenly got a plane, and while many people got TVs, 24 hour programming is a relatively new concept. Gen X and millennials have had to adjust to a rapid expansion of technology that thrusts itself right in our faces. It takes time to adjust to that, but just as we start to, something else happens.

 

[hat]

.