One of the early tricks I learned in studying generational differences was to identify the signal events that marked the symbolic end of one generation and transition to another. For instance, I learned that my own Baby Boomer generation was marked by births after 1945 – the end of World War II – and before 1964. Why 1964? That was the year that the birth control pill entered the American market widely. It not only changed birth rates dramatically, but was a key component affecting societal mores about sexuality.
We hit another such moment in the U.S. a few years ago. Did you realize it? Do you know the trigger? I’ll give you a few clues. It has nothing to do with presidential elections. Or with major geopolitical shifts. Or with rapidly changing social morays on sexuality. What then? In 2012, for the first time, the percentage of U.S. citizens who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.
That, along with the simultaneous rise of social media, is shaping what psychology professor and author Jean Twenge has called iGen. While the oldest iGen members began in 2007 upon introduction of the iPhone, by 2017 surveys indicated that three-quarters of adolescents owned one. And, Twenge argues, huge numbers of these teens are “living their lives on their smartphones.” She describes the smartphone/social media ubiquity as an “earthquake of a magnitude we’ve not seen in a very long time” in the formation of the ethos of a generation.
Some of the outcomes of “living on their phones” are positive, such as lower drinking rates and declines in early teen sexual activity and birth rates. Some are puzzling (at least to Boomers like me), such as a delay in getting a driver’s license and a lower likelihood of dating. However, the vast majority of the effects on adolescents of living on their phone are undeniably negative: skyrocketing rates of depression, suicide, feelings of loneliness, lack of sleep, and mental health crisis.
Here’s an interpretive stat: the number of teens who get together with friends every day dropped by 40 percent from 2000 to 2015. Kids are not hanging out in person; they are “together” on their phones, keeping snapchat streaks alive. And, Twenge says, “there is not a single (statistical) exception: teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are likely to be unhappy.”
The advice from Twenge’s research for happy adolescence is straightforward: “Put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do something – anything – that does not involve a screen.” Even Mark Zuckerberg confessed that Facebook has done as much to divide people as to bring them together. His New Year’s resolution was to “fix that.” But using Facebook to fix the breakdown in community it has fostered is a little like using the “hair of the dog that bit you” to fix a hangover. You can’t ride to freedom in Pharaoh’s chariot, and you can’t fight Goliath in Saul’s armor.
Naturally, it’s easy to rail on “the kids these days” about their phones. Frankly, I see as many people my age who cannot make it through a single meal without checking their phone, who spend untold hours every week on Facebook. A sober look in the mirror might be appropriate before criticizing a younger generation.
The appropriate theological category for response might be incarnation. What did it mean that Jesus was bodily present with his disciples? That he ate with them? Walked with them? Talked with them in person? And what would it mean for the rhythms of a church community to be built around physical presence with one another in community? It is not enough to “love at a distance.” If the incarnation of Jesus is normative for our practice, we actually have to show up with people.
So put down your smartphone. Turn off your laptop. And do something – anything (almost) – that involves being with a person. In the name of Jesus, Amen.