Fast Forward: Are Smartphones Hurting Our Kids?

Fast Forward is a series of conversations with tech leaders hosted by Dan Costa, PCMag’s Editor-in-Chief. Costa’s guest for this episode was Dr. Jean Twenge, who recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic called “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”

- Dan Costa

Dan Costa: Your new book, “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us,” coins yet another term: the "iGen generation." I imagine the Simon & Schuster lawyers went back and forth with Apple a little bit on this, perhaps? Apple’s very protective of that little 'i.'

Dr. Jean Twenge: Well, you can’t copyright a little ‘i.’ At least, that’s what I would guess.

Not yet. Who is this iGen generation? I still call anybody younger than me 'millennial,' but there’s another generation that snuck in there.

That’s right. Millennials [were] born roughly 1980 to around 1994. This new generation, iGen, was born about 199 to 2012. At first, we thought millennials would last a little bit longer, but then some trends showing up in the data made me think that we have a new generation born around the mid-90s.

The reason it’s a new generation is because they behave a little differently than the generation before them, and that’s how you can put the marker down. What are some of the differences between those two generations?

iGen’s the first generation to grow up with the smartphone for their whole adolescence, and that’s really had ripple effects across their behavior, their attitudes, their mental health. As one example, obviously, they spend a lot more time online, and texting, and on social media than teens did 10 years before, when it was the millennials who were the teens.