Link: My Month Without a Smartphone

In short, Haidt argues that smartphones and social media are rewiring our kids’ brains, which is making them the most distracted, depressed, and fragile generation in history. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the companies behind smartphones and apps are highly incentivized to keep us glued to them. Just look at what Sean Parker, the first president at Facebook, said about the company’s strategy, “We wanted to exploit a vulnerability in human psychology. To do so, the apps needed to provide a little dopamine every once and a while to keep you hooked. Me, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom (Instagram’s founder), and others knew this and we did it anyway. God only knows what it’s doing to our kids.” They knew smartphones were the perfect mechanism for delivering dopamine and somehow convinced parents to willingly provide them to their kids during the most formative part in their lives. The results are more than troubling, especially considering smartphones and social media arrived on the scene rough a decade-and-a-half ago. #

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