Are Smartphones Stopping Love For Millennials In 2018 And Beyond ?

This past week several very large investors in Apple sent a letter to it’s Board of Directors expressing concerns over changing social habits in teens due to the use of iPhones. Recently, former Facebook President Sean Parker expressed concerns over the use of social media and its impact on our society. The question is are smartphones stopping love for millennials in 2018 and beyond ?

These questions started coming to the surface in part from the work of a researcher who has studied generational differences for over 20 years. Dr. Jean Twenge calls people born after 1995, iGen, which is also the name of her book on the topic. The iGen is unique as they are the first generation to grow up with smartphones, which were introduced as the original Phone in 2007. Her research found dramatic changes started to occur in children in 2012, the year when over 50% of people owned a smartphone.

In general, the iGen has less interest in personal interaction overall, that is spending time physically with others. Many years ago, recess at school was time to play and hang with friends, now its phubbing with the smartphone. We have written before about the use of smartphone being a potential problem in all relationships.

The data on dating is almost frightening, 12th graders (around 18 years old) are as much as 25% less likely to be interested in dating as opposed to just 5 years ago, There is even less interest in sex, although that may be a good thing, depending on your point of view. But worse yet, the trending appears to be gaining exponentially year after year. So are smartphones stopping love for millennials in 2018 and beyond ?

What about beyond dating, the study was conducted with over 2300 students and found that over 75% were negatively distracted by smartphones usage in school. And it gets worse, this same iGen gets less than 7 hours sleep a night due to the over 5 hours of average daily usage of a smartphone and with all that depression is now up 27% !

If you think about almost anywhere we are in public, how hard is it to find a teen staring at a smartphone ? Or when was the last time you saw a teen that wasn’t staring at a smartphone in public ?

We applaud these folks to bring awareness to this issue and hope that Apple will pay for more research to find a way to reverse this negative trend.

With so many factors making dating and finding love challenging for those over 35, it looks like the next group of millennials will now be even more detached ?

Tell us what you think ?