You and meme: connection in the smartphone era

How smartphones affect our social interactions across generations

Illustration by Al Short

Written by Ryan Morris

Your best friend is complaining about the grueling realities of their office job — again. Your phone sits on the table, pulling you in with every buzz.

Twitter, texts, Instagram — eventually you give in, unlock the phone and scroll as your friend relays their story. You nod occasionally and smile supportively but rarely meet their gaze.

Yikes! They just asked for your opinion. You can’t recall their last sentence. Can you really listen and scroll at the same time?

Pew Research Center reported in 2021 that 97% of Americans had cell phones, and 85% had smartphones. While it may seem like these handheld machines have been around forever, this is a recent phenomenon. Just ten years ago, only 45% of Americans owned a smartphone.

Gabe Travis, a part of Generation Z, got his first smartphone in middle school. It was used as an incentive by his mom to increase his reading habit.

When Travis could finally have that smartphone, he was elated. He pushed through a grueling reading test, and when his mom said, “nice job,” he knew. The phone was his.

His first apps weren’t meant for texting or digital connection, but rather for popping bubbles and other basic tasks turned into games.

April Heath, a millennial, obtained her first smartphone at age 25.

“I was probably immediately hooked,” she said. “It was weird, because me and my husband both got them at the same time. And that was, like, all of a sudden, we were just always on our phones.”

Psychologists, sociologists and the average American have all made speculations as to how these devices affect our daily lives. Psychology Professor Jean Twenge refers to Generation Z as “iGen” due to the effects of smartphones on their social lives.

One stunning statistic revealed that twelfth graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth graders did in 2009.

The decline in social outings can lead to other negative effects, too. Gen Z has higher rates of sleep deprivation, lower rates of dating as teenagers and later average ages of driving.

Contrary to Twenge, a study from Southeastern University found that the use of smartphones by college students did not affect the amount of time they spent on face-to-face interactions. But, when your phone is buzzing, you’re scrolling and listening to your friend. The phone isn’t affecting the amount of time spent with them, it’s affecting the quality.

Like most of us, when Heath got her first smartphone — an iPhone 4 — she and her husband spent more time on their phones, even when they were together.

Although Travis got his phone in his early teens, he had a similar experience. Suddenly he’d watch his friends win one-player games while scrolling on his own device.

Travis said this habit continues today, even unconsciously.

Picture Travis, a 22-year-old Western Washington University student with facial scruff and slightly-curly hair, deleting Instagram while sitting on his couch. The app is gone. There’s no accessing it, right? Wrong. Travis still opens his phone looking for Instagram, fully aware that he deleted it moments before.

In an attempt to be more present, Travis actively combats this addictive behavior. After each use of Instagram or another social media app, he promptly deletes it. However, he does redownload it a couple times a week or so to check in.

The app that started this habit was Snapchat. What began as a form of communication turned into social media overload for Travis with an overtly-sexualizing Discover page and the addition of stories.

“It was just so easy for me to start scrolling and lose the time, just completely get kind of ‘lost in the void.’”

Old Dominion University found in a survey of multiple age groups that 18- to 30-year-olds are the most negatively affected in their ability to hold face-to-face conversations and the most likely to use their smartphone as a primary source of communication.

When Travis was in middle school and early high school, smartphones weren’t for communicating, but for games.

His friend, Max, would get in the car on the way to school and his iPod immediately left his pocket. For 30 minutes, or even longer, Travis would watch Max play. The obsession continued during breaks and even after school.

Travis compared the satisfaction and entertainment of smartphone games to that of alcohol or cannabis. He named waiting for his mom, sitting at the dentist, and sitting on the bus as just a few of the mundane activities that phone games got him through as an adolescent.

As a young adult, social media often leaves Travis feeling exploited by advertisements, uncomfortable and questioning the health of his habits.

“I try to be really aware of, like, it almost feels like something that I’m eating, where it’s like, is this something that I really want to eat? Is this content really something that I want to consume?”

Heath worries about Gen Z’s habits as well.

“I think that it really negatively affects their social skills and real-life coping skills, gives them a false sense of importance,” she said.

“For all their power to link kids day and night, social media also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out,” Twenge wrote.

High schooler Kristina Galicova did feel left out, but she soon found help and connections online.

“All of [my internet connections] taught me something,’’ Galicova said in her Ted Talk. “They taught me how to communicate with people.”

Galicova has many internet friends, some closer than others.

“We respect each other, we love each other, but most importantly we treat each other like real people,” she said.

Humans can only maintain about 15 well-cared for relationships at a time, and social media pushes that limit by exposing us to hundreds of people per day. While we may feel pressured into these surface-level connections, only 15 can be meaningful in our day-to-day lives.

Psychologist Lara Otte advocated for these “real connections” over “pseudo-connections” in Psychology Today. Otte stated connections made over social media are often superficial, based around appearances and curated content.

However, she is clear that social media has the capacity for real connections as well.

“Real connections are built over time, in small exchanges of mutual openness, curiosity, empathy and generosity,” she said. “Humans need real connections with others to thrive.”

Travis was grateful for these internet connections during COVID-19. During the various lockdowns of the pandemic, many people could only connect via phone or social media.

Heath reflected on her own relationship with social media as being helpful. “There’s people that I probably wouldn’t keep in touch with if it wasn’t for social media,” she said.

When Heath reflected on Gen Z’s relationship with social media, she felt it was quite different from that of millennials. The amount of time they spend on their phones diminishes their self-awareness, she said.

In 2021, Pew Research Center found the social media gap is closing between generations. The once 39% difference in time online between baby boomers and millennials is now only 11%.

With over 70% of Americans using social media, is there a way to feel connected without it? The average American spends five-and-a-half hours on their phone per day, with nearly half of that time spent on social media.

With apps such as Screen Time, the time tracker for iPhones, anybody can see the hours they spend on their smartphone per day.

Travis usually spends four hours on his phone per day, with the majority of time spent on Reddit. When Travis limited his usage, he only spent about two hours on his phone per day and had a total of 12 apps. Heath spends between three and four hours on hers and spends most of her time on Facebook.

What does your usage look like?

The Journal of Economic Psychology found in 2017 our overall well-being is affected by phone usage and quality of social interactions. The more we use our phones, the less high-quality social interactions we have, leading to lower overall well-being.

Although Travis may agree when it comes to social media, he hasn’t given up on other ways a phone can bring people together. He has been trying to take more photos, to capture memories both alone and with others. His phone also plays a role in interactions with his parents. When he’s fixing something for his dad or playing information technology for his mom, he turns to YouTube tutorials and Google.

Can these supplemental materials really aid in our connections?

To see what it was like for prior generations, Travis sometimes doesn’t use these tools of instant gratification. He said he will try to sit with the unknown instead of receiving an immediate answer to his questions via Google.

“That’s the crazy thing to me,” he said. “Just 15 years ago, even 10 years ago, they just didn’t have the same level of connectivity that we have today.”

“I don’t see my phone leaving my side anytime soon,” he said. “If anything, I think it’s only going to become a more integrated part of my life. But I really want it to be a tool for me that I can utilize when I want a really powerful tool, but not something that has control over me. I want to have control over the tool.”

You tell your best friend you support them in any decision they make. Your gaze drags back down to the phone screen. Your best friend stops talking about their office job. They see you scrolling, eyes glued to the latest Twitter theory about a Taylor Swift album drop. The blue tint of your screen reflects in your glasses. They get up and leave the table — they’ll find someone else to listen.

Pew Research Center reports 46% of smartphone users say they cannot live without their smartphone, but what will we sacrifice for it?