By COLBY HALL
Any parent with a kid addicted to TikTok or Instagram is familiar with the concern that it’s ruining their brain. I’m of a certain age where I heard that refrain regularly from my Dad as I settled in each summer afternoon to watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and The Partridge Family. It was the Golden Age of reruns.
But what was once hyperbole has turned into science, and the results are beyond alarming. The universal addiction to smartphones is actively ruining our brains — especially Generation Z — and at a pace that should absolutely freak everyone out.
The Financial Times recently published a devastating analysis of American personality changes using data from the Understanding America Study, and the findings should stop you cold.
In less than a decade, conscientiousness — the trait most closely linked to responsibility, follow-through, and self-control — has collapsed among young adults. For those aged 16 to 39, it’s not a gradual erosion; it’s a plunge from respectability into the low 30th percentile. Older adults (who aren’t addicted to smartphones), meanwhile, remain essentially unchanged.
A graphic from the post recently went viral:
The FT write up generously sums up the findings, writing:
While a full explanation of these shifts requires thorough investigation, and there will be many factors at work, smartphones and streaming services seem likely culprits. The advent of ubiquitous and hyper-engaging digital media has led to an explosion in distraction, as well as making it easier than ever to either not make plans in the first place or to abandon them. The sheer convenience of the online world makes real-life commitments feel messy and effortful. And the rise of time spent online and the attendant decline in face-to-face interactions enable behaviours such as “ghosting”.
Other charts in the article reveal that attention deficits are not just at issue: a deeper commitment to a digital world over the real world is also evolving at an alarming rate, as is a sharp decline in trust and extroversion. If you need evidence of this just go to any public park and witness the vast majority of people staring into their phones.