I’m no Luddite. As I type this essay on my laptop, hooked up to a big LED monitor, my home sous vide machine is cooking ribs for tonight’s dinner. Later this morning, my cloud-based calendar will tell my smartphone to tell me that it’s time for a video call with a client in San Francisco. Technology makes my life easier and better, in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. And yet . . .
I was talking to a friend a while back about her son, whom I’ve known since he was little. He’s a remarkable kid: smart, funny, athletic, and surprisingly sweet. I know him mostly from family camping trips, where he’d spend hours wading into mountain lakes to catch snakes and poking apart animal scat with sticks to find out what the local bears and bobcats might be eating.
Apparently, since starting middle school, he’s changed. Now, instead of ranging around the neighborhood with a pack of feral kids, he spends hours in his room, staring at TikTok videos, only emerging for meals and school. It’s as if the wide-open world he once occupied has shrunk down to a 2.5 x 5-inch screen.
There’s been a lot written about the dangers of social media for kids. Meta’s own internal research has shown that the Instagram platform causes serious harm to the body image, mental health, and well-being of adolescents—especially girls. Much of this toxicity comes from the way these platforms supercharge social comparison. Teens have always looked in the mirror and found themselves lacking, but now the measuring stick for their inadequacy is the fantasy world of staged 60-second videos and curated Instagram pages. It’s a lot easier to feel like crap when everyone else’s life looks perfect.
I wonder, though, if we need to look beyond the content of these apps (as insidious as it may be) and start thinking about the dangers of the technology itself. This is where my disclaimers about not being a Luddite come in. As soon as I start questioning the wisdom of technological progress, I expect to hear a litany of historical precedents where shortsighted technophobes stood in opposition to the advancement of civilization.
“That’s what they said about the __________!” [insert “printing press,” “radio,” “television,” or “computer.”]
I’ve always considered this a bit of a straw-man argument. Sure, there are some amazing technologies that once seemed scary and new but ended up improving our lives. Often, though, progress comes at a cost, and technology needs to be reined in. Few would disagree that factories and automobiles have been a mixed bag, and you’d be hard-pressed to come up with an argument that nuclear weapons have made this a better world. Just because we can build something doesn’t mean that we should—or that we know how to control it.
The smartphone was originally developed as a pocket-sized computer, and at first, that’s how we used it. We searched for information on the Internet. We emailed each other or texted. We stored documents and images and played computer games. Very quickly, though, the portability of the smartphone began to separate it from our other devices. Because we could always have it with us, there was no limit to the amount of attention it could demand. Whole industries were spawned around the monetization of that attention, and software engineers earned fortunes figuring out how to seize it and not let go.
I don’t know what it would have been like if I’d had a smartphone when I was a shy teenager, but I can imagine. I remember how self-absorbed I was. I remember how hard it was to communicate with my parents. I remember how boring and pointless life felt sometimes and how fraught and confusing it felt the rest of the time. I was too risk-averse for drugs and alcohol, but a magic little device that I could take everywhere, that distracted and stimulated me, that helped me escape the discomfort of my own skin? I would have been all over that. It would have been my drug of choice.
With technology, we can fashion a tool for almost any purpose, but once the tool is built, we shouldn’t be surprised when it fulfills that purpose. A GPS is designed to get us from one place to another. An Instapot is designed to cook chili. An AR-15 is designed to kill. A smartphone is designed to attract and hold our attention, to the exclusion of all else, anyplace and anytime. Those are all technologies, but only one of them accompanies our children into their schools and bedrooms with our knowledge and tacit approval. Once it’s there, it does exactly what it was designed to do.
These days, our 13-year-old is lobbying hard for a smartphone of her own. We’re holding out as long as we can.
Jeff Lee refuses to trade in his secondhand iPhone 7 in Seattle, WA
Read more of from the Dad Next Door:
Dad Next Door: What ever happened to summer?
Dad Next Door: Leader of the pack
The devil wears tiny high heels
Dad Next Door: ‘Lip-Gloss-Gate’
Dad Next Door: The Importance of Being Earnest
The Dad Next Door: A Moveable Feast
