More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.
By Jean M. Twenge
Sept 2017 Issue of The Atlantic
Note from Pastor Kevin Lea: This lengthy article is written from a secular perspective. The spiritual implications are even more severe in how smartphone addiction has impacted the health of the family and church. It is my observation that this younger generation has little or no time for biblical truth, discipleship or even concern for lost souls (including their own). Yes some of them play religion by going to church with their parents, but their hearts are in their smart phones and the next text or tweet they get from one of their shallow equally addicted “friends”.
There is little evidence this trend can be turned around. The new products coming off the shelf are only going to make it easier for people to embrace the increasingly self-absorbed culture that has spread across the globe.
The result has been that the hearts and minds of our modern youth are numb to the exhortation to pick up their cross and follow Jesus in biblical salvation, so that they can be a spiritual light to the lost souls around them. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are in the last of the last; Jesus must be coming soon!
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! (2 Tim 3:1-5 NKJV)
One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s 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 middle-school 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’re 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
To read this article in its entirety, go to: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/
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