Quote:I agree with Flagler about the social implications, everyone staring at their phone instead of talking might not be a good thing.
It's also not a good thing when local culture is wiped out. It used to be you could drive to Charleston or LA or New York State and there would be variety of thought and values and family.  Today everyone gets the same instantaneous info, and a lot of it is pure propaganda for either political or commercial purposes or useless nonsense. In general having the world's library at your fingertips would seem to be a great thing for personal and business reasons, but it's actually killed local stores, a lot of local commerce, and dampened local people meeting and sharing news without outside influence. Is that "Better"? I don't know about that. I tend to think not. I don't think we are dumber for it, but more removed from each other, ironically at the same time everyone's facebook page says they have 1000 friends.

This is something I have stressed to my kids about...I have tried to get it through their heads that all this texting and facebook/social media is detrimental to their ability to communicate...Today people are "friends"  with scores of people they have never met face to face and carry on a relationship without ever meeting...Kids today have diminished social skills because they don't really "hang out" like we did...They are not good problem solvers when they have a problem with someone, they just air it out on facebook or text and then unfriend people and block them...The lack of face to face or even diminished face to face time results is poor social skills, and a lack of knowing how to "play nice with other people" ( that description is for lack of a better term at the moment)...I've held job interviews with teenager after teenager and they really have no idea how to present themselves in an interview due to lack of social skills...They have no problem/conflict solving skills that you would expect a high school graduate to have...The only thing they know about conflict resolution is to not eat [BLEEP] from anyone, and that also applies to rules...If rules are dumb they shouldn't have to follow them...

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