It's time to quit blaming smartphones

Hardly a day goes by when I do not encounter at least one article bemoaning the "tragedy" brought upon us by smartphones and social media. If you believe the hype, today's youth are going to hell in a hand basket, lured by the incessant clicking and swiping of their ever-evolving digital devices. We are losing our very ability to interact with the people around us, these doomsday prophets warn.

And I get it—we are subjecting ourselves (especially our youth) to a profound social experiment. It's hard to say definitively what impact growing up immersed in digital-device use is going to have, but preliminary studies seem to indicate that they do affect our socialization and even our very brain chemistry. Social media contributes to a polarized society where it's all too easy to interact only with those with whom we already agree.

But we can also be led to think that somehow everything was just fine before the digital age. We can reach the faulty conclusion that kids were living in a social utopia where they played outside with other kids and where everyone sat on front porches singing, playing games, and listening to grandma's tales of yesteryear—and then along came smartphones and social media and all that was gone.