I’ve seen kids not even 3-4 years old already hooked to smartphone screens. Even toddlers around 1 year old with an smartphone mount in their stroller.
Main impact on kids is lack of socialization, lack of emotional regulation and a complete impact on their capabilities to keep their attention. Those used to be indicators for a future failed adulthood.
I remember traditional drugs only becoming present around 14-16 years old. Alcohol was probably the most prevalent, and probably the most dangerous. Followed by Cannabis, tobacco and some recreational drugs like MDMA.
Most of those drugs had a component that actually pushed kids heavily towards socialization and forming peer groups. Now looking back to the results of that drug consumption I would say that most of the individuals engaging on them were able to regulate and continue to what it seems to be a very normal adult life. Obviously tobacco with terrible potential future health effects, but beyond that, everyone I know turned up pretty healthy. Not only that, I remember some time later that the most experimental group (mdma, LSD, mushrooms) of drug users being full of people with Master Degrees and PhDs.
The new technological drugs scare me way more than the old traditional ones. Obviously it is a normal response of the known va unknown. Time will tell.
I particularly worry about men. The greater cultural and possibly (more controversial) biological susceptibility to isolation coupled with this stuff means a generation of young men who are isolated, hopeless, poor, lonely, and sexless.
Then we have a culture that, depending on which side you listen to, either shames them as potential rapists from the patriarchy or simply “losers.” (IMHO the “woke” shaming is just code for loser, as I have heard said in private.) They are neither. They are victims of exploitation, of a nearly exact analog to the Matrix that is destroying their minds.
I speak mostly of social media and addiction optimized gaming, not all tech. The problem is the apps not the phone. Really anything that works very hard to “maximize engagement” should be considered guilty unless proven innocent. This phrase is code for addiction.
As we have seen the gurus that appeal to such men are the likes of Andrew Tate. As awful as he is Jordan Peterson is actually among the less toxic of the crew since he does occasionally say something good.
In the future we could have gurus for hordes of lonely poor men that make Tate look helpful and wise. This is how we either LARP the Handmaid’s Tale or — worse — ISIS or the Khmer Rouge.
I have two daughters and I fear for their safety in a country full of fascism radicalized angry emotionally stunted men who have been told they are losers and then handed pitchforks.
Our industry is the industry making the opium to which these youth are addicted and that is destroying them. We are destroying the minds of a generation every time any B2C app tries to optimize its time on app KPI.
Mothers and fathers of boys: raise your sons or Andrew Tate will.