Technology Is Taking Over Our Kids’ Lives and Making All of Us Feel More Isolated

Smartphones that link us 24/7 ironically have made us dumber and less connected than ever.

The title above obviously isn’t an original one, as lots of books and articles have been written on the issue. There was a reason why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t allow their kids to have technology until after high school. My track record is an imperfect one. My older kids didn’t have smartphones until they hit 8th grade and couldn’t use apps until high school. My divorce put my youngest in a different place, but I still didn’t allow him to bring his smartphone to my house until 8th grade, as I believed nothing had changed since his sisters were his age that warranted allowing him access earlier. In fact, it became a key point of conflict in my divorce that I simply wouldn’t budge on. He also has a computer to game with his buddies. On that one, I checked with his pediatrician who assured me that so long as it involved gaming with his friends (not creepy strangers posing as young boys), it wasn’t much different than playing in person with them.

I struggle mightily with him streaming shows on the various services. I admittedly should be more strict on how much time he is allowed to stream shows, but, again, not to make excuses, as any divorced parent knows, I constantly face the candy man versus dentist dilemma. It gets old always being the dentist, so I pick my battles as best I can. At the end of the day, I figure so long as his grades remain solid, then the status quo is working.

That doesn’t mean I don’t worry about the impact technology is having on Generation Z and Generation Alpha. If America’s next war is fought on screens and not with boots on the ground, we might be fine. If it will require men to fight in real life, the results, I fear, won’t be pretty. America’s youth are often too fat, too lazy, and too soft to fight a war, let along dig a hole with a shovel or mulch their parents' yards. Their addictions to TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram can be crippling. An eight-hour outage of one of those apps is paralyzing to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. They get the shakes, as their fear of missing out (FOMO) skyrockets. They’d rather sit home alone on their smartphones than go do something due to FOMO.

The country singer, Michael Hardy, put out the song, “Screen," a couple of years ago. I absolutely love it and touches on this issue. In the song, Hardy sings:

Shooting stars all burning up the night sky

Something someone sees once in a lifetime

Gotta look on up before it's gone

But damn if we ain't fixed on

A good for nothing cellphone screen

...

See the world, take it in, Catch a sunrise

With your own eyes

...

A baseball getting dusty at a Walmart

Could send a kid all the way to Wrigley ballpark

Might be a hall of fame one

The whole world knows his name one

But he'd rather hit a homerun on a screen

...

Take a good look out the window

Keep it in your pocket at the rock show

Yeah just give it a try

Every battery does but your memory will never die

If you’ve been to a concert lately, you know exactly what he means about people watching their smartphones instead of the actual concert. It is a ubiquitous habit. Who among us hasn’t taken our kids to see a natural beauty or wonder only for them to gloss over it so they could send their next Snapchat? This guy in the video below hits the nail on the head when it comes to Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

The narcissism and instant gratification ingrained by technology also are deeply problematic for America. These kids actually think snaps or videos of them doing literally nothing are akin to man landing on the moon. They are overly-influenced by people they don’t know whose fame only comes from making videos that snare a critical mass of followers to render them “influencers.” As a result, they zealously watch how many likes they get, quickly deleting posts that don’t hit the magic number that shows they are important or else, e-gads, they would be seen as unimportant should followers note the lack of likes they got.

Every generation gets caught up wanting to have the “right” things—be it clothes, shoes, gadgets, etc. The right thing historically meant one or two things the popular or wealthy kids were wearing or doing. I vividly recall feeling like a loser because I had to wear Toughskin jeans and Keds shoes, as my parents only had so much money to outfit six kids. My highly irrational fear of being seen going into K-Mart by schoolmates riddled me with insecurities (not sure why it never occurred to me that if they saw me there it was because they were there, too). With the advent of global commerce and smartphones, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are bombarded with information about what to wear, do, and say and their access to things has never been higher. It is why every suburban teen today owns a pair of white tennis shoes and Birkenstocks—some influencer decided (or likely was paid) to wear those items, so soon America’s high schools were swamped by kids wearing white tennis shoes or Birkenstocks. Label consciousness has skyrocketed to the point where Nike now is for basic kids. None of these kids realize that their expensive tastes likely means being financially hooked to mommy and daddy well into adulthood—hell, many of them still live with mommy and daddy well into adulthood.

Finally, there is the isolation created by the apps. Instead of making us feel more connected to people, the apps actually result in less connectivity and more isolation. Why? Simple—the apps pressure users to create and to curate perfect versions of themselves. Their lives are fascinating. Their marriages are stronger than ever. Their jobs are great. Their kids are brilliant, amazing, and D1 sports prodigies. Yet, few of those things are true. As Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Lives are mundane. Marriage is hard. Bosses suck and work can be mindnumbing. And kids, oh boy, kids are beyond challenging. But, no one admits any of their real life realities because the pressure is to be perfect. You have to keep up with the social media Joneses who are all perfect based on Instagram and Facebook, which, of course, they aren’t.

Years ago I deleted my Facebook account (and eventually all social media except X) because I decided it really should be called Fakebook, as everyone is fake on it. If you try to be real on Facebook by revealing some of your real life, it is like you are violating every tenant of society. How dare you!!!

• “We don’t want to know that Billy is a pain in the ass who gets in trouble at school and poor grades!!”

• “Don’t shatter the faux Facebook glass by telling us your marriage is in deep trouble, as you think your spouse is having an affair!”

• “Who cares if you are underpaid, overworked, not appreciated in your job that requires you to spend too much time away from your kids!"

After all, if you get real, you may force your Fakebook Friends to also confront the misery of their own lives. We’d all rather stay blissfully ignorant of the troubles of others, so we can hide from our own messes. The result is each of us suffer in silence instead of finding support from those going through the same thing or who have gone through it and can provide comfort and advice. Our procedural connection to others has never been higher, yet our substantive connection has never been lower. We know people, but we don’t really know them, you know? We suffer in silence day-after-day. It is madness. We’ve lost our ability to be vulnerable and relatable.

We’d all be better off if we ditched as much technology as we can so our kids could be free of undue social influences and if someone created an app called, “RealLife,” where we could create smaller circles of real friends with whom we share the ups AND downs of our lives. Where we could seek comfort and advice when we faced the tough challenges life puts in front of us. And when something good happened, our friends would engage with us more to celebrate than just putting a heart or thumbs-up emoji on our post or, worse, an AI-generated response. Smartphones that link us 24/7 ironically have made us dumber and less connected than ever. Who’d a thought…

P.S. From my lips to their legislation: I recently went on the Bruce Hooley Show as I always do at 12:05pm on Thursdays to talk all things politics. Bruce asked me about the proposed property tax elimination law that could be on the statewide ballot next year. I told him I thought it was likely going too far, as replacing $19.5 billion in property taxes would require an enormous sales tax hike for Ohioans. I added that the better approach would be to put limits on future property tax increases. No sooner did that idea leave my lips on 98.9FM The Answer then two state representatives started "crafting legislation that would require 60% of voters to approve levies for schools, libraries and other services.” The current threshold for levy passage is 50% plus one vote. You gotta love it when they finally listen:-)

P.P.S. I got a kick out of the headline below describing "How Norway Beat EV Range Anxiety.” When your entire country is the size of Montana and you can’t actually drive beyond it, range anxiety probably isn’t high. When you live in America and you want to drive from Ohio to Florida, however, range anxiety if real and, for many, a dealbreaker when it comes to electric vehicles.