Well well well if it isn’t the consequences of our actions
itsthe_implication_ on
Reading this while at brunch with my dad and grandmother, all on our phones.
mrleakybutthole on
Don’t worry, AI will save you
It’s all a part of the plan
FinallyCleansed on
>”They have grown up in a digital world that has rewired how they communicate, form relationships and manage stress,” it will say. “They have fewer experiences of workplaces, and they present with higher levels of anxiety and depression.”
Human societies just seemed to have been utterly unprepared to deal with something so culturally changing on such a deeper level as the modern Internet and social media. Even today, long after the damage has set in, the best idea that there seems to be is to attempt youth social media bans with utterly incompetent technology.
Society fundamentally changed itself and now faces a type of human being increasingly incompatible with its own world and realities.
Youareaproperclown on
Is this article blaming young people for the fact that no one is hiring them?
lostfly on
This is not a UK only issue. I have seen first hand in two countries. So it is safe to conclude that is a worldwide problem.
The young people appear extremely hopeless about the future.
I don’t blame them, look what have lived through…2008 financial crisis, COVID and now constant uncertainty with wars…the last straw is AI taking away jobs from the kids who have worked hard and are ready for the workforce.
It’s depressing.
IrishWarhog on
What parents are giving their 11 year old kids smartphones, that’s the issue here. I’ve nieces and nephews that are 8 with a smartphone, honestly.
Mine has a flip phone. If she needs a lift she can call us to get one but it’s not doing much else. She has zero interest in joining social media
Do some fucking parenting
re_me on
‘Speaking to The Times, Mr Milburn rejected claims that young people are “snowflakes”’
My mom and her friends use that term all the time as they constantly expressoutrage over something. I can’t help enjoy the irony her generations fragility.
Brochamam on
How can something so inevitable be causing so many problems right now? It was public knowledge that this would be a problem, so why didn’t they create measures?
Kristophigus on
Well, guess we gotta try again with new ones.
Flat-Pitch-9340 on
My phone’s algorithm told me to ignore this article
____DatBoi on
they don’t even know how to skin a mammoth… old man worries about what the young people are doing… this has never happened in the history of the world…
clinicalia on
There needs to be a way to make sure parents can’t just give their 8-year-old a smartphone. It’s insane and hugely irresponsible. Human evolution cannot keep up with how fast we enhance technology. The sad thing is, a lot of governments are just going to use this problem as a way to overstep and spy on citizens. I hate to say it, but as much as I love the Internet for all the good it has done, it’s done a lot of harm too and we’ve really screwed ourselves.
D00d_Where_Am_I on
AI will replace them, dont worry. 🤪
Universal basic income will likely need to be adopted, no?
FriendEmbarrassed559 on
Incoming mandated break and bedtime timers on UK phones.
-SaC on
Mum: Kids of today – ask them to wire a plug, and they’ll look at you like you’re a loony!
Me: You don’t have to attach your own plugs now, and haven’t had to for decades. Can -you- wire a plug?
Mum: Only the boys got to do that stuff when I was at school. I bet I could if I had to, though.
CommercialComputer15 on
Err… should that not be more like older people increasingly out of toch with new ways of communication, work and social life? The anxiety and stress could also be a result of young people having to adapt to old world antics while being dominated economically by old people.
Novel_Sheepherder277 on
I’m struggling with the logic, which appears to suggest that mobile phones are the reason a million people are unemployed.
Seems to me more likely because the economy is in the shitter.
UpsetPhilosopher6022 on
Blaming the child for drinking poison instead of adult who handed it to them is backwards as fuck.
Go after the companies that make this shit addictive and terrible for mental health.
HotResort6579 on
Hear me out i got a great idea. Dont erm use social media. Before people say it cannot be done most of my family never use social media including the younger kids.
Stalactie on
UK faces economic catastrophe if it doesn’t stop siphoning money from the young to give to the old (wealthiest demographic in the nation btw)
Cicer on
Insert Principal Skinner meme
No! It is the children who are wrong.
Ludwigofthepotatoppl on
And it’s incumbent on the older generations to do something about it, so naturally nothing of substance will be done until most of them are retired or dead.
AutoGeneratedUser359 on
Had a 21 year old girl start working with us. She was literally attached to her phone.
Each day I would notice her several times taking videos of herself at her desk, presumably to her mates, (or TikTok accounts as she was trying to ‘build her followers’).
She was completely unable to focus on a work task for more than ten minutes, unable to follow the train of thought in staff meetings (would bring up completely random topics, or start talking about topics that we had concluded ten minutes ago).
Her brain wiring was utterly unstable for a cooperative work environment.
AloneChapter on
Why is it always those that have no control that are the ones that destroy the economy ? Market manipulation, insider trading, own Corporations, politicians that are owned are never the ones who created issues
NyxUK_OW on
Smartphones are just one of the many reasons that have resulted in what we’re seeing today. It seems ludicrous to try and frame it like the sole causal factor in all of this.
I think phones and social media are incredibly damaging, that much is true, but I think they’re also the perfect escape for young people who feel overwhelmed and unmotivated. As a Gen Z who was technically a NEET for a year I feel like im in a good position to share my perspective.
It feels like every week we see another headline about how the government is squeezing us even further to support everyone else BUT us. This country feels genuinely hostile to younger people who see absolutely no hope of a future here, theres just semingly no avenue to a comfortable life let alone success. So many of us have useless degrees after being sold on the idea of University being a necessity. Now all we have to show for it is student debt that climbs and climbs all the while pay has remained stagnant since before many of us were born.
Life and the future has never felt so hopeless, entry level jobs have mostly disappeared, what remain are looking likely to be phased out by AI in the coming years, mid-level jobs are even more competitive as experienced and skilled workers who have been laid off in the multitude of dying or shrinking industries are competing for those same spots. Both myself and many friends my age all have experienced months if not years spent sending 100s to 1000s of job applications and getting nothing and nowhere. The job market is genuinely awful.
And then there’s everything else… owning propety is beyond a distant dream, corruption is becoming ever increasingly apparent, dating is the hardest its ever been, the climate is fucked, the environment right behind it, 3rd spaces are gone, our highstreets are dead, our political landscape is a mess of incompetence and the rise of the far right, not to mention is steadily becoming increasingly US-like, the geopolitical landscape is frankly insane right now, a huge portion of GenZ and Alpha had their social and educational development hindered by the COVID pandemic in ways that just seem to have gone entirely unaddressed and of course the cost of living crisis continues to grow in severity
I could go on for hours but is it any surprise that a generation that has never seen good or even ‘precedented’ times feels so devoid of hope and motivation that the little glass slab in their hand that was INTENTIONALLY and frankly MALICIOUSLY designed to abuse the way our monkey brains work to hold our attention with an iron fist, ends up being a preferable use of our time and energy.
I for one can attest to the crippling anxiety felt when considering what the future holds for me and my peers. I struggle with it constantly, and as a result I spend too much of my free time looking at a screen to distract myself.
Putting my head in the sand is not productive in the slightest, I’m aware of that, but it offers an escape from reality that nothing else can match in accessibility and effectiveness.
jert3 on
This has nothing to do with our winner-take-everything economic system where the top 1% vampire-class control more wealth than the 99% below them.
Nope, it’s kids and their smartphones fault. How dare they use smartphones, its the devil’s technology .
comox on
Need to pay young people in upvotes.
EvilSandWitch on
In the 18th Century people were saying basically the same things about reading books. That children had no imagination, that they became “sensation-seeking and morally dissolute and promiscuous behaviour” because of “reading rage” or “reading addiction”.
mmm19284202 on
tl;dr
Plastic-Ad-2496 on
They cant really get work experience with entry level jobs requiring years of experience. A lot of problems blamed on smartphones are products of greed.
Braklinath on
Growing with tv, the internet, and video games didn’t end up like this. It was only when we ended up allowing the youth to have touchscreen devices with unlimited access to social media that things became an issue.
And so, giving kids personal touchscreen devices should be considered child abuse. Not just software blocks that can be easily bypassed. The hardware itself.
Avacado7145 on
Only way to solve this is wealth redistribution by force.
Bango-TSW on
Why is this unique to the UK? It’s a problem right across the developed world.
justgord on
see Garys Economics .. or read Piketty.
smartphone usage is an issue, but not THE MAIN issue.
MapleMaScoot on
Lmfao treat people like human fucking beings government never falling for these fake ass news stories again no matter my age from now on.
Negative_Gift9076 on
Every day I drive my kids to school. Everyday is the same depressing sight, endless state school kids standing around glued to their phone.
We are very fortunate that our kids go to private school where phones aren’t tolerated. I feel so sad for their generation and we as parents have failed them.
trajiin on
I’ve saw on this site people proper mincing anyone who even talks about trying to police their kids phones and it baffles me. First off your children really shouldn’t have one until their late teens and secondly you should definitely set timers to make sure their sleep is regulated. This can all be done whilst maintaining their privacy. Anyone who disagrees doesn’t have children or is one themselves.
38 Comments
Well well well if it isn’t the consequences of our actions
Reading this while at brunch with my dad and grandmother, all on our phones.
Don’t worry, AI will save you
It’s all a part of the plan
>”They have grown up in a digital world that has rewired how they communicate, form relationships and manage stress,” it will say. “They have fewer experiences of workplaces, and they present with higher levels of anxiety and depression.”
Human societies just seemed to have been utterly unprepared to deal with something so culturally changing on such a deeper level as the modern Internet and social media. Even today, long after the damage has set in, the best idea that there seems to be is to attempt youth social media bans with utterly incompetent technology.
Society fundamentally changed itself and now faces a type of human being increasingly incompatible with its own world and realities.
Is this article blaming young people for the fact that no one is hiring them?
This is not a UK only issue. I have seen first hand in two countries. So it is safe to conclude that is a worldwide problem.
The young people appear extremely hopeless about the future.
I don’t blame them, look what have lived through…2008 financial crisis, COVID and now constant uncertainty with wars…the last straw is AI taking away jobs from the kids who have worked hard and are ready for the workforce.
It’s depressing.
What parents are giving their 11 year old kids smartphones, that’s the issue here. I’ve nieces and nephews that are 8 with a smartphone, honestly.
Mine has a flip phone. If she needs a lift she can call us to get one but it’s not doing much else. She has zero interest in joining social media
Do some fucking parenting
‘Speaking to The Times, Mr Milburn rejected claims that young people are “snowflakes”’
My mom and her friends use that term all the time as they constantly expressoutrage over something. I can’t help enjoy the irony her generations fragility.
How can something so inevitable be causing so many problems right now? It was public knowledge that this would be a problem, so why didn’t they create measures?
Well, guess we gotta try again with new ones.
My phone’s algorithm told me to ignore this article
they don’t even know how to skin a mammoth… old man worries about what the young people are doing… this has never happened in the history of the world…
There needs to be a way to make sure parents can’t just give their 8-year-old a smartphone. It’s insane and hugely irresponsible. Human evolution cannot keep up with how fast we enhance technology. The sad thing is, a lot of governments are just going to use this problem as a way to overstep and spy on citizens. I hate to say it, but as much as I love the Internet for all the good it has done, it’s done a lot of harm too and we’ve really screwed ourselves.
AI will replace them, dont worry. 🤪
Universal basic income will likely need to be adopted, no?
Incoming mandated break and bedtime timers on UK phones.
Mum: Kids of today – ask them to wire a plug, and they’ll look at you like you’re a loony!
Me: You don’t have to attach your own plugs now, and haven’t had to for decades. Can -you- wire a plug?
Mum: Only the boys got to do that stuff when I was at school. I bet I could if I had to, though.
Err… should that not be more like older people increasingly out of toch with new ways of communication, work and social life? The anxiety and stress could also be a result of young people having to adapt to old world antics while being dominated economically by old people.
I’m struggling with the logic, which appears to suggest that mobile phones are the reason a million people are unemployed.
Seems to me more likely because the economy is in the shitter.
Blaming the child for drinking poison instead of adult who handed it to them is backwards as fuck.
Go after the companies that make this shit addictive and terrible for mental health.
Hear me out i got a great idea. Dont erm use social media. Before people say it cannot be done most of my family never use social media including the younger kids.
UK faces economic catastrophe if it doesn’t stop siphoning money from the young to give to the old (wealthiest demographic in the nation btw)
Insert Principal Skinner meme
No! It is the children who are wrong.
And it’s incumbent on the older generations to do something about it, so naturally nothing of substance will be done until most of them are retired or dead.
Had a 21 year old girl start working with us. She was literally attached to her phone.
Each day I would notice her several times taking videos of herself at her desk, presumably to her mates, (or TikTok accounts as she was trying to ‘build her followers’).
She was completely unable to focus on a work task for more than ten minutes, unable to follow the train of thought in staff meetings (would bring up completely random topics, or start talking about topics that we had concluded ten minutes ago).
Her brain wiring was utterly unstable for a cooperative work environment.
Why is it always those that have no control that are the ones that destroy the economy ? Market manipulation, insider trading, own Corporations, politicians that are owned are never the ones who created issues
Smartphones are just one of the many reasons that have resulted in what we’re seeing today. It seems ludicrous to try and frame it like the sole causal factor in all of this.
I think phones and social media are incredibly damaging, that much is true, but I think they’re also the perfect escape for young people who feel overwhelmed and unmotivated. As a Gen Z who was technically a NEET for a year I feel like im in a good position to share my perspective.
It feels like every week we see another headline about how the government is squeezing us even further to support everyone else BUT us. This country feels genuinely hostile to younger people who see absolutely no hope of a future here, theres just semingly no avenue to a comfortable life let alone success. So many of us have useless degrees after being sold on the idea of University being a necessity. Now all we have to show for it is student debt that climbs and climbs all the while pay has remained stagnant since before many of us were born.
Life and the future has never felt so hopeless, entry level jobs have mostly disappeared, what remain are looking likely to be phased out by AI in the coming years, mid-level jobs are even more competitive as experienced and skilled workers who have been laid off in the multitude of dying or shrinking industries are competing for those same spots. Both myself and many friends my age all have experienced months if not years spent sending 100s to 1000s of job applications and getting nothing and nowhere. The job market is genuinely awful.
And then there’s everything else… owning propety is beyond a distant dream, corruption is becoming ever increasingly apparent, dating is the hardest its ever been, the climate is fucked, the environment right behind it, 3rd spaces are gone, our highstreets are dead, our political landscape is a mess of incompetence and the rise of the far right, not to mention is steadily becoming increasingly US-like, the geopolitical landscape is frankly insane right now, a huge portion of GenZ and Alpha had their social and educational development hindered by the COVID pandemic in ways that just seem to have gone entirely unaddressed and of course the cost of living crisis continues to grow in severity
I could go on for hours but is it any surprise that a generation that has never seen good or even ‘precedented’ times feels so devoid of hope and motivation that the little glass slab in their hand that was INTENTIONALLY and frankly MALICIOUSLY designed to abuse the way our monkey brains work to hold our attention with an iron fist, ends up being a preferable use of our time and energy.
I for one can attest to the crippling anxiety felt when considering what the future holds for me and my peers. I struggle with it constantly, and as a result I spend too much of my free time looking at a screen to distract myself.
Putting my head in the sand is not productive in the slightest, I’m aware of that, but it offers an escape from reality that nothing else can match in accessibility and effectiveness.
This has nothing to do with our winner-take-everything economic system where the top 1% vampire-class control more wealth than the 99% below them.
Nope, it’s kids and their smartphones fault. How dare they use smartphones, its the devil’s technology .
Need to pay young people in upvotes.
In the 18th Century people were saying basically the same things about reading books. That children had no imagination, that they became “sensation-seeking and morally dissolute and promiscuous behaviour” because of “reading rage” or “reading addiction”.
tl;dr
They cant really get work experience with entry level jobs requiring years of experience. A lot of problems blamed on smartphones are products of greed.
Growing with tv, the internet, and video games didn’t end up like this. It was only when we ended up allowing the youth to have touchscreen devices with unlimited access to social media that things became an issue.
And so, giving kids personal touchscreen devices should be considered child abuse. Not just software blocks that can be easily bypassed. The hardware itself.
Only way to solve this is wealth redistribution by force.
Why is this unique to the UK? It’s a problem right across the developed world.
see Garys Economics .. or read Piketty.
smartphone usage is an issue, but not THE MAIN issue.
Lmfao treat people like human fucking beings government never falling for these fake ass news stories again no matter my age from now on.
Every day I drive my kids to school. Everyday is the same depressing sight, endless state school kids standing around glued to their phone.
We are very fortunate that our kids go to private school where phones aren’t tolerated. I feel so sad for their generation and we as parents have failed them.
I’ve saw on this site people proper mincing anyone who even talks about trying to police their kids phones and it baffles me. First off your children really shouldn’t have one until their late teens and secondly you should definitely set timers to make sure their sleep is regulated. This can all be done whilst maintaining their privacy. Anyone who disagrees doesn’t have children or is one themselves.