This is really overstated, kids are probably less horny in a time when dating is all weird and gamified.
Do they do that stuff? Probably! But “before you’ve held hands” is wayyyyyy exaggeration 
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I hope it’s not true.
But if “sexting” before any physical intimacy becomes the norm then that would be truly scary shit eh. But totally normalised for anyone who isn’t an old synth nerd.
I had lots of larfs and sex. One time I came home with teeth marks all over me.
I hate how smartphones have killed travel.
First time I went overseas, I was 20. Went to live in Vietnam for a while. Having to figure a place out without being able to just Google everything, much less auto translate… get a job, find an apartment, navigate a new city, all by just talking to people… Having contact with home only via email, accessed from an internet cafe every few days… It was hard, but the friction was what made it worthwhile. Travel presents so few challenges now, unless you really go somewhere extreme. But to not use your phone is kind of affected and annoying for people around you.
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Nice…haha
My Dad is this way. Retired, and while he’s still active, as soon as he plants his butt anywhere the phone is out.
Statistics indicate that the younger generation is in fact having less sex, but I don’t know it they’re less horny. I think kids are likely just as horny as it’s pretty much a biological imperative, but things like free endless porn, AI filtered expectations of appearance, in-group social media hierarchies, social media in general, and dating apps has fried young peoples minds and social skills.
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Probably one of the worst aspects of smartphones is where life starts to lean in on it as a requirement. For instance in the workplace, they might have some app you need to use for your work or HR related stuff these days. That said I’m sure there are ways out of this, and companies would be open to other options. Just as an example my entire company no longer has desk phones, we just have our own devices for phone calls, but actually barely anyone calls anyone anymore, everyone makes a Teams meeting post-covid.
So I dunno… we definitely seem to be in this technology mix for the foreseeable future.
It’s hard not to retreat these days without offending people. Delete yourself from Facebook - people think you deleted them. Me personally I have no friends on FB - it’s more of an informational tool - marketplace / events etc. Instagram is on the verge of being nuked after not checking in on it all year. But once you go down that path you really do cut a lot of people out of your view. But in the end, you meet a lot of people through your life, maybe someone you met for a brief second now somehow lives in your feed for the last 10 years. It’s weird.
But it’s interesting when you do bounce from socials. I had a birthday recently and maybe 3 or 4 people reached out via text. It’s kind’ve telling. Unless you’re on social media bleating about it, that’s kind’ve what you’ll get.
But back in the day I just used to carry a portable map around in a backpack whenever I went anywhere in the city. Discman, digicam. Pen and journal. The smartphone was a revelation because it unified all those things for convenience.
I think the utility argument is still a valid one, but the addiction and distraction side of it is something that sort of needs to be self managed I suppose.
Also, with Christmas in view, it’s easy not to compare it as something you can sort of be on board with, happy, use it as you need, positive, have a laugh, be in control. Or you can kind’ve be the grinch curmudgeon, old and jaded, sad about everything in the world.
Life is a bit like that, Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock was all about it. And culturally, the ‘soft’ side of the technology continually develops it’s own memes, such that the internet lingo and culture of today isn’t quite the same as it was ten years ago. Hard to keep up with - ie TikTok - I keep clear of it and have no idea about it.
But yeah, I have my moments, too. But life isn’t static and neither is technology, nor will it ever be.
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Not sure about this. I have travelled before and after and my preference is to avoid being disruptive in the places I go. The phone helps. What has killed travel is cheap air fares, better income distribution in many countries, and social media. There is one big negative about phones. People have always been jerks with their cameras but now everyone has one, and it does video also.
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I love my phone! I use it all the time for utility purposes!
It replaced so much bullshit like land lines, alarm clocks, GPS, needing a physical PC for email/calendar/internet and so on! If I didn’t need my laptop for work I wouldn’t own one! I’m grateful I have this technology!
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I’m so old, I got Jesus’s beeper number.
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Kids these days will never know the awkwardness of having to make small talk with your friends parents while you waited for them to come to the landline.
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As someone who was born in the late 70s and was divorced and dating again in my early 40s I think the new way is so much better. It’s great to meet someone, follow each other on IG and see what they’re all about, start chatting and see if there’s a vibe, then make plans to meet.
When I think back to being in college I have no idea how we ever made plans. You had to call someone and leave a message on an answering machine and then they’d call back. I can barely remember what that was like.
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I’d be perpetually lost without gps and google maps.
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Born in the 70s and didn’t get a mobile until my early thirties. I did have a pager in the late 90s for a while though… as was the fashion 
I really enjoy the utility available to me but not the habits I developed that turned a tool into a vice of sorts.
This past year or so I have spent a considerable effort to reclaim my time/attention from my phone. Went from a daily average of 5+ hours of screen time down to less than 45 minutes and it has been somewhat unsettling in the same way as giving up alcohol or cannabis has been.
I have managed to utilize the “bonus hours” primarily by doing things that were basic before going mobile… reading books, working on art, meditating, small talk with strangers I meet throughout the day etc.
I find mindless chit-chat about the weather while waiting for a bus delightful in a way I never thought possible. People are pretty amazing, online personas are pretty trash.
I am just starting to feel a difference by allowing time for “healthier for me” habits to materialize. I still have my social accounts… I check FB once a week for like 3 minutes, IG a couple of times a week for 5minutes or so.
But, it still takes considerable effort to remind myself to “not use” and to redirect my attention towards active intentions that are moving me closer to sustainable peace-of-mind.
I get a bit anxious when I leave my phone at home still but, I just remember that it was a choice I made to leave it at home and I just tune into what is immediate and allow the calming to seep in from it.
I am pretty grateful to have grown up without being leashed to the wired world and the opportunities afforded me as a result. Feels damn nice returning to some basic things as I enter my 50s.
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I’m not definitively saying it’s better or worse. It’s different.
But I think one thing we’ve lost without realising is being alone and thinking about people. Perhaps incorrectly and with rose tints. But it was a calming brain space to reflect and internally plan on things you’d want to talk about/experience next time you saw them.
Kind of like a social brain defrag to reflect on your behaviour/interactions and perhaps remotely empathise, aiming to improve and enhance relationships next time you encountered them.
We don’t need to do that anymore as everyone broadcasts a feed of what they want people to see. And we can talk about anything or request clarity at any time if we want/need to. It’s a relentless stream that you can only turn off if you delete all the apps. But turning off and being comfortably alone within your own inane brain seems to be an anxiety inducing social isolation nightmare for people born into a world of constant connection.
I wrote a poem a few years ago about this actually, that sums up modern life:
These days we’re only ever truly alone,
When we’re having a poo and forget our phone.
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A nice trick I’ve used a couple times when I felt I was getting trapped into too much smartphone screen time, is to set the display to grey shades.
Just removing the color of that screen will make it instantly much less addictive (in my experience). Yet the actual utilities will still all work.
Edit:
It’s not magic either.
Eventually it works less, and thus self discipline has to take over.
But because of all the utilities, and some that are almost requirements and super inconvenient to replace (any 2nd factor/digital ID like BankID in Norway, public transportation tickets, …) I think working with the tools that are available on smartphone rather than going light or brick is still a better option… for me, at the moment.
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I felt this as soon as my kids started to understand what phone is and see me looking at it, so I’ve setup a rule for myself - put the phone somewhere where I don’t see it but I can hear if someone calls/message me, I don’t have any apps that do notifications except for messaging (which is way limited because I refuse to use whatsapp and noone on this planet has Signal) and some work email inboxes, so I put the phone either somewhere in the kitchen or work room so I don’t have access to it.
you missed a call? all good, you call back later.
you missed a message? all good, catch up later.
I have plenty of hours when my kids not around to use the phone, when they are I just put it away.
when I’m with kids I don’t need that damn phone near me.
the only thing I’m missing is sometimes there’s something I want to take a picture of and the phone is far away, I thought buying a simple point and shoot camera just to have it somewhere in the living room…
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I always enjoy reading books or watching films that were written before there was a phone or internet. A lot of the plots would never work nowadays but seem plausible.
I hate modern TV shows and movies always showing us screens of people texting on their phones. You have talented actors, let them have a conversation for god’s sake.
Growing up on the countryside, I’m glad there was internet and I’m glad we had cellphones when I became a teen. I’m also glad there was no smartphones or modern social media, so my internet time was spent managing my own forums and creating a community like Elektronauts with cool internet friends that shared my tastes in gaming and music. And for texting with real life friends, we already had SMS and ICQ.
To echo @plragde: Also lots of horrible horrible car drives on school days trying to find a venue in a foreign city with printed out Google Maps descriptions finding shit for an hour. So often not finding places because I suck at navigation. And always having to plan so much ahead because of this navigation stuff, so I mostly left that to people better at it - nowadays I’m much more self-reliant when it comes to navigating the world.
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IDK, I again think it’s fried the older generation much more, they have the choice to think to the before times when our generations are forcing this shit on kids.
Kids are rolling as well as they can with an internet that infinitely sucks, and many choose to leave it/social media behind since they see it as it is.
“Kids are getting worse” is such a trope that it literally predates written history.
Aristophanes’ satire is the source of old men yelling at clouds 
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This happens when I leave the phone home for an errand without realizing it. There is a certain calmness about it that definitely occurs even if not by choice. Good practice of acceptance I suppose.
Likewise. Though I feel like you were able to count on people to be more reliable back then or at least it was more commonplace to have manners about returning calls or sticking to plans. Not so much these days as my circle has grown smaller, but in my 20s and early 30s it was sort of commonplace to be a bit flakey on plans.
Can’t deny the convenience, that’s for sure.
I sort of feel this way too as a not so great navigator. However it’s also just a lost practice to plan your route so you might be short changing yourself and would be fine in that environment. I find myself using the GPS for places I’ve been to several times as my brain is kind of turned off in tracking my direction and landmarks when I’m following GPs directions. Once I make a tiny effort to note landmarks and street signs I find I typically wont need it anymore.
Interesting. I will check my phone for this option and give it a go.
I was gifted a pretty nice camera last year and thought I would do this as well. I haven’t really picked it up as my issue (which is a me thing) is that I never find the time/desire to sit down and unload the memory into a computer to edit. I have this issue with jam recordings as well. I’m thinking a desktop setup would help with this mentally, but I’m getting off topic.
I agree. The older generations are definitely the ones making all this stuff possible and unleashing it on the youth. To clarify my thought, it wasn’t to say the kids are getting worse as a whole per se. Only that they objectively (according to studies) have less sex overall and I think those are likely the main compounding factors. These factors definitely still effect older generation behavior with the same access as adults, but as there is a noted significant drop in sexual activity in these generations, I can’t help but point to recent “advancements” in digital dating, AI relationship bots, and endless access to porn at a young age as causal issues since older generations didn’t have this from birth basically.
Just an opinion of course.