Do you think that your smartphone is your best friend; or worse still, that smartphones are going to end earth as we know it? Either way, you may be right! ‘Some More News’ might make you think twice in their episode ‘Are Smartphones Bad for Us?’ Let’s take a look.”
The show pulls from 147 different academic studies, books, articles, and videos to explore the impact our “everything” device has on our lives. A fascinating, well-researched tale that could change your point of view about your digital friend awaits. Join me as we explore the intriguing insights from this episode—trust me, it’s a journey worth taking!
*Some swearing included. And maybe some millennial humor.
Are Smartphones Bad for us?
My Thoughts
- Actually learning about the studies that news articles talk about is always interesting. I love how Cody dives into the studies here and pieces together a much more comprehensive review of the information at hand.
- Correlation isn’t Causation; it’s honestly crazy how often this needs to be said!
- “The only thing we know is that smartphones began to get popular kinda around the same time teen depression did. But also, not really. According to the CDC teen suicide rates started to spike around 2007.” (17:35)
- I find it fascinating that teen suicide went down during covid and only went back up when kids went back to school.
- It all goes back to No Child Left Behind! But also, not really.
- These skits at the funeral between Cody and Katie are great. “Funeral Hopping.”
- Moral panics! My true bane. Dungeons and Dragons? Video Games? Writing? I really have fallen prey.
- I really love how just listening to music is considered “Screen Time” in the study.
- The CDC is incorrect here? Liberals and Conservatives unite.
- Its actually crazy how many policies started in the 1970’s would have helped a lot in the modern day which were unceremoniously ended in the 1980’s. Looking at you President Carter’s solar panels.
- The algorithms having the end motivation of keeping eyes on the screens, the programs who monetize your time are scary nowadays! People think the world is getting worse, but honestly, so much of the issues are simply amplified outside of control.
- “Why do we all appear addicted?”
- This is wild, startups base their apps on behavior, motivation, trigger tactics. Where they try to get those three factors to align on the phone. Phones are designed to be addicting, its a core purpose of the system that we cannot live without.
- The average teen gets more than 200 notifications in 24 hours. Interesting fact news man! Notifications suck!
- “Addictively and compulsively social. Too social?”
- Man, phones sure are moving too fast for us to handle, but man is our government not prepared for that.
- A sweeping phone ban just feels so boomer.
- “Phones are the symptom of something, not the cause. So what is the cause?”
- One of the current pushbacks for banning smartphones from parents is that they want to be able to reach their child in a school shooting event. Wild how the normalized fear of school shootings makes children and parents anxious and more lonely.
- I don’t know how people are not getting afraid of climate change. The most recent weather events and storm history has been extreme, the likelihood of massive weather events is going up every year.
- “Where can you exist outside for free?”
- The phones really have replaced everything else! Everything, they have taken over.
- “If you want kids or people in general to get off their phones the main way to fix that is to give them a reason to do so. They will react to that. In fact, here’s a study showing that most teens will have a healthy relationship with technology if the adults around them also do. They are a product of their environment. And right now, phones are the only environment.”
