Are smart phones and the lack of
 

shared sacrifice killing our country?

yes

Yes

I'm an old geezer..no smart phone. I find all those running about constantly staring into little screens amusing. Seems a sort of sickness. I do have an old style flip phone because there are no more pay phones.

Time marches on.

I was horrified a bit when a young waitress told us she voted for Bernie "Because all my facebook friends said to". My Gawd, she hadn't a clue that many of those "facebook friends" aren't even real people. No idea of the manipulation going on. To her, cyberspace is the only world. Pretty sad...

(edit) Guess I'm just an analog old geezer trying to survive in a digital world...

YES !

My wife, and daughter are completely immersed in every new app, and technology that their Samsung 10s can handle. I, on the other hand, have my wife's old Samsung 5 that I often leave at home, or lose, because I don't need it for anything.

I still print out a mapquest map for a new destination, have never spoken to "Alexa", ands have never accessed any of my wife's apps on her old phone....just not interested.

Smartphones I disagree with, they’ve simply taken the place of tv as the opiate of the masses. I think the capability that I carry in my pocket more than outweighs the mouth breathing zombies who are obsessed with reading what some remote acquaintance had for dinner. Shared sacrifice, maybe. There’s a distinct lack of willingness to put in sacrifice and work for a reward, instead we have an increasing percentage of the population that believes they DESERVE the rewards without the sacrifice. Hard work is what makes this company great, the fact is that anyone in America can be a success if they are willing to work. But that hill is becoming increasingly steep.

I heard a bit of information recently that was news to me.

Just google "teenage suicide rates and introduction of the iphone" and see how many articles and research confirms it." Teen suicide rates skyrocketing have been tied back to the iPhone 1 launch date. Once the iPhone became available and smartphones increased in usage, teenage suicide rates have increased substantially. Social acceptance and jealousy, etc - all tied to social media - have played a part in depression and acceptance (or lack thereof.)

NO.

Smartphone are just a device. I have an iPhone 11 Pro. Insane money for a phone, but it is a mobile computer, and communications device for my business. With software like Foreflight it is something most pilots love. I can communicate with my business partner where ever he is, from Washington State, to South Africa.

The phone is my tool to use as I see fit. It is like blaming the car for the demise of the buggy whip industry.

Personal responsibility for ones actions is indeed a major problem. It is "the way it is done" most often to blame a device like a phone or someone else for a smoking addiction. The phone is just a tool. It is not the problem.

Simple fact for most everyone. YOU are in life where YOU chose to be. You have made choices all your life. If you make good decisions and chose wisely, you get good results. Bad decisions produce bad results. It is not because your neighbor made good decisions and is doing good that you have problems.

I heard a great homily in church about social media, and how we basically see everyone’s highlight reel and it’s totally true. Nobody posts about their teenager getting crappy grades, their marriage on the rocks, and being up to their eyeballs in debt. But you do see everyone’s happy smiling families, amazing vacations, new cars, and fancy house. I think it gives people, especially teenagers who don’t have much life perspective, a totally unrealistic perspective and expectations in life. Probably why I hate social media....

I agree. My phone takes the place of my notebook, my camera, and a lot of my memory. When I buy small items like loose bolts at Lowe's I used to write down the item # or try to remember it if I didn't have my notebook. now I just take a picture of the tag on the bin and they scan it right off my phone. Before I take something that is unfamiliar apart I take a photo of it in case I don't remember where are the parts go when it's time to reassemble it. If I'm driving and I think of something I want to remember I just say "Siri, take a note" or "Siri remind me at 0:00 oclock." I also use it for communication once in a while, and it makes a great pocket watch!

I think there is a growing attitude of "Screw you, I've got mine," in the country. Shared sacrifice is regarded as a quaint, naive concept.

I disagree. I know too many people who made good decisions and met with tragedy. We are NOT in control of our lives, we bob along in life like rowboats on a stormy lake. We are only in control of how we deal with the forces that push us around.

While there is some truth to the adage, "The harder I work, the luckier I get," luck still plays a part in all our lives.

Bingo! Those with MS or another disease hardly made a choice. Life is a mix of things, both "tragic and magic" as a Jimmy Buffett lyric says so well.

Killing our culture as we know it? Yes, absolutely. It's an epidemic in the making. Although we should be masters of the machine, the reverse has happened.

For you, me, and many on this board perhaps, but for the majority of our population (especially females in my observation), it is a conduit to self-absorption, obsession, intolerance, lack of discipline, addiction, anxiety, and depression.
To find a parallel, it's a crisis in the making quite similar in scope to the ambivalence and ignorance associated with smoking throughout most of the 20th century, except the ramifications will be far greater.

Best.

I have no smart phone.

I'd say no, social media isn't.(Which is what a lot of smartphone use is.)
People were always making their "highlight reel" prior to social media.
Now that said, maybe it was easier to maintain the illusion with less documentation.

However, what I do consider bad are lot of the "games" on cell phones.
These are pure addiction machines and absolutely rob people.

Education, has changed a lot in the past few decades. The percentage of education that is academic has dropped.
It starts from the beginning. I had graded non academic questions on state tests.
This disturbs me to this day. What it means is those with some psychologies will be held back in life from not getting the academic grade solely because they filled in a "wrong" answer for which there is no "right" answer.

Our education system instead of teaching how to learn is teaching what to think.
It also lacks discipline, and is incapable of instilling discipline.

With discipline, a smart phone, or social media, is just a handy tool.

Yes.

It has become too easy to manipulate our thoughts and desires.

Mama says cellphones are da DEBIL

I think they are great. I'm so pleased my girlfriend has one. When traveling can look at emails and banking. If something went wrong could change flight details.

I only have an old flip phone. I don't think I'd like a smart phone & wouldn't have a use for it much, especially since we don't have a cell signal where we live. My wife however has three or four computers and a late model iPhone. It actually does come in handy when we're traveling. At home, she spends most of the time with a computer in her lap and her phone (I think she uses the internet to communicate with it) going at the same time. She does a lot of her work & communicating with people about work things at home.

My parents predicted the end of the world was coming in 1969 because we had:

War Protestors, Long Hair, Rock music, tight jeans, short skirts, draft dodgers, marijuana, and transistor radios........

BTW - what DID you have for dinner?