Think kids spend too much time on smartphones? Clever Japanese tweet will make you think again

Infographic argues that today’s youth really isn’t so different from the pre-smartphone generation.

“Kids these days spend too much time on their smartphones!” is a pretty common complaint, and young people do, in fact, spend a lot of time using the handy mobile devices. But while older generations may shake their heads at the perceived lack of variety in the leisure activities of today’s technology-savvy youth, one Japanese Twitter user proposes that things really haven’t changed so much since 30 years ago, and has put together a convincing infographic to make his point.

▼ “’Young people nowadays spend so much time playing with their phones that it’s like they’re addicted. ‘ I think people who take that stance are totally off-base. All that’s happening is this, right?”

As @jetsetloo shows, smartphones have become the primary portal by which young people consume several types of media. So while in the ‘80s people would split their time between a VCR for recorded media, a handheld system for on-the-go gaming, a TV for broadcast (the precursor to streaming) programs, a boombox for music, a landline phone to talk with friends, a camera for snapping pictures, a dedicated calculator for complex mathematics, and print books for reading, today all of that content can get channeled into one, intensely operated gateway: the smartphone.

Other Twitter users chimed in with their agreement, plus their own visual representations of how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

▼ Did cranky seniors of bygone eras complain about how kids always had their noses stuck in those darned “newspapers” when they could just get their information from the town crier instead?

Of course, things have changed slightly less still for some people, such as those who are still hanging on to their flip phones.

So in the end, the complaint about kids and smartphone usage really boils down to an argument over whether it’s better to spend a little time with many different media delivery systems, or a lot of time with just one, which probably isn’t a debate worth getting all that riled up about. For my part, since the increasing proliferation of smartphones means I don’t have to get up at four in the morning to hand-deliver print copies of RocketNews24, I’m pretty much OK with it.

Source: Twitter/@jetsetloo