IGeneration: teenagers affected by phones
One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives
in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone – she has had an iPhone since she was
11 – sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and
TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the
mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?” I asked, recalling my own middleschool
days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with
my friends. “No – I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and
brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we are
going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”
Those mall trips are infrequent – about once a month. More often, Athena
and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the
teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family
landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, a smartphone app that allows users to
send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their
Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with
each other. She told me she had spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her
room with her phone. That is just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t
know any life other than with iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more
than we like actual people.”
Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are
both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today’s teens
are physically safer than teens have ever been. They are markedly less likely to get
into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors,
are less susceptible to drinking’s attendant ills.
Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were:
rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It is not an
exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health
crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.
However, 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 the wall.”
Though it is aggressive behavior that I don’t support, on the other hand – it
is a step towards a life with limited phone use. So, if I were going to give advice
for a happy adolescence, it would be straightforward: put down the phone, turn off
the laptop, and do something – anything – that does not involve a screen.
According to the author, in her childhood she used to …
1)
watch TV a lot.
2)
call her mother every half an hour.
3)
go to the mall with her family.
4)
do the shopping with her friends.
Ответ:
Which of the following does Athena do monthly?
1)
Goes to the mall with her family.
2)
Uses the Snapchat.
3)
Invites friends to her place.
4)
Changes her iPhone.
Ответ:
For Athena’s peers spending time alone in their rooms seems …
1)
natural.
2)
soothing.
3)
awkward.
4)
difficult.
Ответ:

Предыдущий
вопрос Следующий
вопрос