Big news!
Headline- All our problems are caused by cell phones!
Popular best seller type book -- Anxious Generation has been published and gives us the answer to life, the universe, and everything in the 21st Century ... cell phones.
Gen Z apparently is having substantial problems with depression and anxiety and this is supposedly explained by smartphones, social media, cyberbullying etc..
I am very very unsure about the correctness of this hypothesis; it took me years of extensive reading and thinking to substantiate the role of environmental lead poisoning as the answer
to life, the universe, and everything in the 20th Century. I had actually thought that was that and we would then all just live happily ever after in our lead free utopia.
Well ... life never stops like that ... it keeps on rolling forward and stuff happens. One of the big problems is that it is usually not all that obvious to
contemporaneous people what causes what. Life is one big mystery that is nearly impossible to unravel. In the 20th Century, hundreds of thousands of tons
of lead were dumped into the US ambient air supply each year and a massive pandemic of crime emerged and ordinary people went about their lives as if nothing
were happening. Fortunately, catalytic converters could not tolerate all of the lead contamination, so lead emissions declined and we have seen an ongoing near disappearance
of youth crime over the last few decades.
Now another social catastrophe type mystery crises is emerging. However, it is not as obvious what is causing it. With the CATscans that revealed an absence of a prefrontal cortex
it became self-apparent that lead was a causal agent in the last social crisis. What is the cause now? We know that for some reason starting around 2010 as formulated in the book a youth mental
health crisis emerged particularly in relation to anxiety and depression and this was somewhat more prominent in girls and those on the left politically. Interestingly, this pattern is not seen in
those in their 50s etc.. So, they looked around and noticed that smartphones emerged around 2010 and this seemed to fit the curves. Smartphones are causing the crisis? When you
consult the research literature, no consensus has arisen that it is as simple as smartphones bad.
{As an aside, I only bought a smart phone within the last year. I had thought that only the rich and famous could afford these gadgets, so I had avoided adopting the technology
to the bitter end. Ultimately, though, I was forced into purchasing one when I became required to dual authenticate online purchases ... then I had to empty the retirement fund to
upgrade. Funnily, enough, after all of this hardship and worry, it turned out that we have saved a great deal of money by joining the smartphone upper class. The phone I bought
has no monthly charges and is pay per use; the cell phone itself only cost about $100. In the last year we have saved almost $1,000 by joining the technology aristocracy. We have not
activated the call answer feature so we do not have to pay for the annoying telemarketing calls; we make our calls short and sweet to avoid the per minute charges; and we avoid making
outgoing calls and use email instead. We also let others text us as incoming SMS messages are FREE!
Has mag1 become anxious, depressed and all around more socially miserable after leaving the telecom stone age? No not really. I now do spend quite a bit of time on the cell phone
and usually scroll with it in bed before and after sleeping -- it is somewhat addictive -- though I find that it helps to connect me with others in my life circumstance and opens up
additional life perspectives that I had never considered before. On the occasions when I have been canceled on social media for saying the wrong things, I have somehow managed
to carry on with my existence without too much harm to my self-concept. I realize that younger kids in high school etc. that might face cyberbullying, or social exclusion might feel
such rejection somewhat more strenuously, though given my deep knowledge of my genetics I know for me that even if I were in such an environment that I would still just roll with it.}
It could be quite difficult to determine what the causative agent might be for the social change that we are now witnessing. Human life is not a controlled experiment in a laboratory
that can be endlessly manipulated. We only ever have an imperfect understanding of what is cause and what is effect and through time these causes and effects can change. For
gen alpha, the emergence of gen AI introduces the possibility that a new social mega-force could be emerging even now. Whereas, gen Z might have experienced a techno-shock that disrupted
the formation of naturalistic social bonding in the bricks and mortar environment -- replacing the non-interactive autistic like induction of social dystopia in the TV generation -- we might now
see gen alpha embrace profound engagement (without the autistic features of TV) with generative reality. Potentially we will look back fondly and nostalgically to our times as a quaint time before
a truly disruptive social reordering. It is not clear whether this will be for the good or bad. I suppose we will just let it all unfold and then see how the kids turn out a generation from now.
In that context they might be highly contented to be immersed in technology (playing robotennis etc. etc.) without all the anxiety and depression. The irony here
being that technology is moving so rapidly now that the solution to the smartphone crisis might simply be to replace with gen AI. As long as you keep upgrading the technology and adding
in more and more flops, you should eventually reach techno-utopia.
As an alternative to the smartphone bad theory to explain our woes, I tentatively will propose the extended lead theory as a possible explanation. My position is that lead neurotoxicity has been the central
driver of social dysfunction over the last century. Not having a prefrontal cortex causes a near endless number of problems of impulse control including crime, teenage fertility, academic troubles,
financial hardships etc.. Interestingly what we have seen emerge starting ~2005-2010 is a post- lead generation. The emerging generation from ~2000 has had the lowest lead levels in over a century.
What does this mean? They are demonstrating nearly non-existent crime rates -- their abuse of drugs and alcohol has been in decline for decades -- their academic achievement has earned them
the moniker the Genius Generation. Everything is so super-wonderful. This projection is in good alignment with their reduced lead levels.
The big question then becomes why does there appear to be a youth mental health crisis emerging? This is somewhat counter-intuitive. Part of the explanation might relate to selection and what we
can actually observe at street level versus what is actually true. During the crime crisis of the mid-1990s, there was a very substantial amount of youth imprisonment. The problems that youth were
facing were locked away from view. Today youth prisons are largely empty (especially in California where the youth corrections system is being mothballed). In the current context there is no longer
this selection process; those who in a previous era might have been serving 10-20 upstate are now in the community without social resources and perhaps coping with various life challenges. Also
the many teenage girls who previously became teenage mothers in the lead era no longer have an off-ramp from a life of academics that they might not be best suited for.
Another consideration is the idea that has emerged in the last decade that every teenager should be in school -- perhaps even that everyone should go to college. That is certainly a noble aspiration
yet some kids really are not that interested in academics, filling in the seats caused by our demographic collapse with unmotivated students might wind up creating a less engaging learning environment
for everyone. If given the right life environment, such an ideal is perhaps plausible. However, for many of the youth heading out to college as the first in their family to attend, there is no guideposts to help
them navigate their academic adventure. This lack of a roadmap can cause substantial life stress. Indeed, research has found that college students today are experiencing extreme levels of academic stress.
The irony then is that it is not so much that the Genius Generation is not a genius generation but that because they are the first such generation there is no infrastructure to help them in their success.
Of course, having this massive cohort all competing for enhanced status also adds yet more pressure.
Thus, while the smartphone as the answer for life, the universe and everything is plausible it is important to realize that other possible explanations exist -- and these alternative explanations have the
advantage of adhering to Occam's razor -- that is the less assumptions the better -- here the assumption being that lead is the primary driver of our social landscape in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Edited by mag1, 30 March 2024 - 08:55 PM.
