Adults hypocritical, often more attached to phones than teenagers

Pretty much everyone over the age of 30 says the same thing about teenagers and cell phones. They claim we’re all addicted. While this may be true for some teens, most of us aren’t too bad. The idea that everyone under 25 is glued to their screens is completely false and damaging to teenagers’ reputation and the seriousness with which they are taken in the world.  

You need not look any further for proof of this than the response to the Parkland school shooting survivors. The survivors are using social media platforms like Twitter to spread their concerns about gun laws over a wide audience. Meanwhile, right-wing politicians are claiming the students will get sidetracked with prom and social media drama. This focus on teens and social media seems hypocritical when you look at our president, a 71-year-old man obsessed with Twitter. 

I would argue that older generations are more attached to their phones than we are. I see it all the time. I’ll walk into a restaurant and see countless adults glued to their phones and scrolling along Facebook. Meanwhile, students in the courtyard and cafeteria mostly talk to each other. We’ve had most of this technology since we were kids; we’re used to it. But our parents have only had this for the last half or so of their lives. They’re still getting used to it.  

It’s not our fault that older generations accuse us of being addicted. The older generation is always trying to alienate the younger generation. This kind of all-of-the-world’s-information-in-your-pocket technology is uniquely Millennial and Generation Z in design. It’s something for us, so, naturally, it can be twisted into something bad and addicting. But most of us aren’t the real addicts; it’s our parents.