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Millennials Are Concerned About the Impact that Smartphones and Social Media Have On Current and Future Generations
Millennials Don’t Believe Social Media Has Had a Generally Positive Effect On Their Generation
While Millennials believe that social media generates more positive than negative emotions within themselves as individuals, they generally believe that it has had a more negative effect on their generation. When asked whether they think social media generally has had a positive effect on their generation only 25.6% agreed. A larger number--38.1%--disagreed, implying that social media has generally had a more negative effect.
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Agree
Strongly Agree
Strongly Disagree 17.6%
8.0%
12.4% 36.3%
Neutral
25.7%
Disagree
The effect of social media on their generation concerns Millennials. We asked respondents to rate the magnitude of their concern about the effect of social media on their generation using a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the highest in magnitude. Respondents on average rated their level of concern at 62.
Millennials find social media so problematic that they aren’t just concerned about its effect on their generation--they are also worried about the impact of social media on future generations. When asked to rate the magnitude of their concern for the impact of social media on future generations using a scale of 0-100, the average level of concern was 71. This indicates a pessimistic outlook on how we interact with our smartphones and social media in particular.
Concern level for respondents’ generation and future
My Generation 61
0
Future Generations 71
100
Implications | Discussion
The Millennials, Smartphones, and Social Media survey reveals the degree to which Millennials have become attached to their smartphones. They sleep with their smartphone, and it is the last thing they see before bed and the first thing they see when they wake. Millennials think about their smartphones and social media constantly, and check their smartphones throughout the day. They also feel that they could not go without their smartphones or social media for an extended period of time.
Yet Millennials’ attachment to their smartphone troubles them. They wish they could control their smartphone use. Additionally, they see their struggle as not just as a personal, individual problem. Rather, they see it as a societal problem that plagues their entire generation and will continue to plague future generations to come.
If smartphone attachment and overuse is a societal problem, this raises the question as to where in society will responsibility lie for addressing it? Do the tech companies bear responsibility? As corporations they must answer to their investors who have a financial incentive to keep Millennials attached to their devices and to social media. Therefore, the odds of tech companies crippling a successful product in the short term is slim. Should the government intervene? It’s impossible to know how long legislation will take to ultimately pass, and, if something passes, whether it will have sufficient teeth to effectively address the problem.
This leaves the responsibility to address smartphone overuse squarely in our hands as individuals. So what can we do? We can draw some suggestions from the Millennials, Smartphones, and Social Media survey.
A strong majority of survey respondents found social media to be the main draw to their device, and many found that turning off all social media notifications resulted in less smartphone use. This suggests that turning off most if not all notifications would be very helpful. Respondents indicate that using a smartphone is necessary on a day-to-day basis. However, in order to use it productively, many Millennials are scheduling and planning out inviolable rules for when and how to use their smartphone. An example of such an inviolable rule would be to not check smartphones 30 minutes after waking up and for an hour before bed.
Nearly 80% of Millennials take their smartphone to bed. However, those who do not take their smartphone to bed tend to use it less. This suggests that a simple, actionable suggestion would be to leave the smartphone out of the bedroom.
Finding a balance between our digital and analog lives is something that will be ever more necessary as we, as a society, continue to incorporate technology into our daily routines. There are no set rules to take back control from technology. But, there is an important takeaway to be gleaned from this survey: finding tech/life balance is a deeply personal endeavor -- one that should meet each of us where we stand.
